Aerospace (Mar 2024)

Experimental Evaluation of Lunar Regolith Settlement Caused by Ice Extraction

  • Zheng Gong,
  • Nicholas Barnett,
  • Jangguen Lee,
  • Hyunwoo Jin,
  • Byunghyun Ryu,
  • Taeyoung Ko,
  • Joung Oh,
  • Andrew Dempster,
  • Serkan Saydam

DOI
https://doi.org/10.3390/aerospace11030207
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 11, no. 3
p. 207

Abstract

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Water resources are essential to human exploration in deep space or the establishment of long-term lunar habitation. Ice discovered on the Moon may be useful in future missions to the lunar surface, necessitating the consideration of in situ resource utilization if it is present in sufficient amounts. Extraction of ice can cause the regolith to settle, which can lead to unintended structural damage. Therefore, any settlement resulting from ice extraction should be understood from a geotechnical perspective. This work reports on experimental investigation of the potential settlement caused by the extraction of ice from lunar regolith simulant containing different textures of ice. The KLS-1 simulant was prepared with different water contents and ice textures. Significant settlement occurred in simulant–ice mixtures with initial water contents of 5–10%.

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