How does Moon landing affect lunar soil? Nasa fires motor to understand

India Today

25-04-2025

Nasa is intensifying preparations for its Artemis campaign, which aims to return humans to the Moon and lay the groundwork for future crewed missions to Mars.Central to this effort are human landing systems (HLS) developed by SpaceX and Blue Origin, designed to transport astronauts safely between lunar orbit and the Moon's surface.As these powerful landers descend and ascend, their rocket engines interact with the Moon's surface, potentially disturbing the top layer of lunar 'soil,' known as regolith.Fired up to land on the Moon!Engineers at #NASAMarshall recently completed a test fire campaign of a 14-inch hybrid rocket motor to help teams prepare for future flight conditions when commercial human landing systems, provided by SpaceX and Blue Origin, touch down on the pic.twitter.com/uUN0MTj8bP— NASA Marshall (@NASA_Marshall) April 24, 2025advertisement
When a lander's engines fire to slow descent, they generate exhaust plumes capable of creating craters, destabilising the landing area, and propelling regolith particles at high speeds in multiple directions. Understanding this plume-surface interaction is critical for astronaut safety and mission success.To investigate these effects, engineers and scientists at Nasa's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, recently conducted over 30 test firings of a 14-inch hybrid rocket motor.Developed at Utah State University, this 3D-printed motor uses solid fuel and gaseous oxygen to simulate the powerful exhaust of lunar landers. Most tests were performed under vacuum conditions to closely mimic the lunar environment.'Artemis builds on what we learned from the Apollo missions to the Moon. Nasa still has more to learn about how the regolith and surface will be affected when a spacecraft much larger than the Apollo lunar excursion module lands,' said Manish Mehta, lead engineer for Human Landing System Plume & Aero Environments.advertisement'Firing a hybrid rocket motor into a simulated lunar regolith field in a vacuum chamber hasn't been achieved in decades. Nasa will be able to take the data from the test and scale it up to correspond to flight conditions to help us better understand the physics, and anchor our data models, and ultimately make landing on the Moon safer for Artemis astronauts,' Manish added.Following the Marshall tests, the rocket motor will be shipped to Nasa's Langley Research Center, where it will be fired into simulated lunar regolith inside a 60-foot vacuum sphere. These experiments will measure crater formation and regolith particle speeds, providing vital data to refine lander designs and ensure safe crewed landings.Must Watch