He directed "Cabin in the Woods." He wrote chunks of "Cloverfield." He was one of the staff writers on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer." regolith followed by another six centimeters of aluminum.
OK. And at Ames we have a couple of facilities that we share as well. There's a regolith test bed where we have eight tons of simulant of lunar material. And we have little rovers that run around in this yard.
But what's interesting about that is this has implications for what's called planetary protection, which means we have to look and trace as best we can, is there any molecules that we're It'll dig into the Martian regolith and then actually collect some samples.
And the soil is been broken up. You have something very akin to regolith from the meteor impact. But it's a bit wetter, and it's not as dry.
And the proposed mission demonstrates in situ resource utilization. It has a lunar rover carrying the Regolith and Environment Science and Oxygen and Lunar Volatile Extraction payload.
So Dan Britt at the University of Central Florida has a team called the Center for Lunar and Asteroid Surface Science. And they study the physical properties of regoliths , the dust that we've talked about on the surface of bodies like the Moon, but also asteroids and the moons of Mars.
So then Curiosity landed on Mars and took one scoop and went, hey, there's a shitload of water in this soil. Turns out for every cubic meter of Martian regolith , there's about 35 liters of water in it. So if you filled your refrigerator with Martian soil, and then pulled all the water out of it, you'd have 35 two-liter bottles full of water.
So you can see how they developed VORTICES out of their name. But they study volatiles, regolith , and thermal investigations. They look at the sources, sinks and processes and the interaction that various materials will have with the regoliths , and the evolution
just did a little launch, went up in the air, did a little quick turn, got its bearings, and then also managed to look around the landscape and even then land back safely, back on the regolith on Mars. So we had the first powered flight on another planet just yesterday, really extraordinary exciting times.
And it's also chosen for its geological similarity to Mars. So actually, the Johnson Space Center Mars Regolith Simulant, a.k.a., fake Mars dirt, is mined about 20 miles from here. So the Hab itself, it has about 1,200 square feet of space, 1,000 feet usable.
Nike swoosh always has to be facing going right but I argued that when they step onto the lunar surface as the footprint goes into the soil or regolith e- will have a swoosh for millions and millions of years they didn't care but
And so even when Apollo 11 landed and Neil Armstrong came out, the very first thing he did after he went down a step or two on the ladder is look around and see how deep in the regolith the limb was sitting. And he said, oh, looks like we've only gone down maybe 1/2 an inch.
That was a big question we had when the astronauts went to the Moon. And it's even more likely to be an issue at Mars, that the regolith might actually include some things that are not healthy for humans to come in direct contact with. So getting ready for human exploration is a big deal.
So we'd like to know, in particular, what kind of questions cover multiple bodies. In other words, if you were interested in the dust or the regolith that sits on the Moon's surface, you might have some of the very same questions that apply to the moons of Mars, Phobos and Deimos and similarly to asteroids.
And they do the remote sensing of airless bodies. Field operations and metrics for human exploration, they look at the reactivity and the toxicity of regoliths . These can be dangerous to humans.
I think going to the lunar surface first is a great way to test a lot of hardware and development procedures. One of the things, for instance, they want to try and do is use the regolith , the lunar surface or the Mars surface, to actually 3D print habitats.
It doesn't form these caldera like they do here on Earth. And so when these impacts were happening, it grinds up rocks, creates little bitty pieces we call regolith -- these are all spiky little things when you look at them under a microscope-- and throw them everywhere.
Understand how the atmosphere works. Understand, is the surface of Mars, is the-- what we call-- regolith , which is fancy for dirt-- the dirt on Mars, is that toxic to humans? That was a big question we had when the astronauts went to the Moon.
When the solar wind comes and interacts with a body like the Moon, it does a number of interesting things. And the fact that we now see OH all over the surface of the Moon, and the solar wind contains hydrogen as it's traveling and runs into the regolith on the Moon, you can see how the H and the OH can get together and form water.
And this is where the most creative discoveries seem to be happening. So what David does is he looks at the impact history and processes, the geochemistry of the regoliths , and age dating of regolith materials. He looks at the near Earth asteroid identification and characterization.
But they study volatiles, regolith , and thermal investigations. They look at the sources, sinks and processes and the interaction that various materials will have with the regoliths , and the evolution of that dust on all of the target bodies.