http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2009/07jan_sixteentons.htm

Sixteen Tons of Moondust
NASA Science News
1.07.2009

...I picked up my shovel and I walked to the mine
I loaded sixteen tons of number nine coal ....
You load sixteen tons, what do you get .... 1

Jan. 7, 2009: If you listen closely, you might hear a NASA project
manager singing this song. Lately, Marshall Space Flight Center's
Carole
McLemore has been working at the end of a sledge hammer opposite a big
pile of rocks, so she has good reason to sing the song Tennessee Ernie
Ford made famous.

"I call it 'choppin' rocks,' " says McLemore, who manages Marshall's
Regolith Simulant Team." The guys keep correcting me. 'It's 'bustin'
rocks, Carole,' they say."

Whether choppin' or bustin', what's this petite woman doing with a
sledge hammer in her hands? She's making fake moon dust.

"We call it "simulated lunar regolith'," says McLemore.
"We need just
the right kind of rocks to make this stuff, and we're getting them
from
the Stillwater Mine in Nye, Montana."

The Marshall team is working with the US Geological Survey (USGS) to
develop a realistic moondust substitute, or simulant, in support of
NASA's future lunar exploration. Team members pound on boulder sized
rocks to break them into manageable chunks, dump these chunks into
buckets, and lug the buckets over to pickup trucks containing
reinforced
containers to hold the rocks. The pickups carry the rocks down the
mountain for loading onto 18 wheelers that transport tons of the
material to the USGS in Denver. The USGS makes the simulant by
crushing
and grinding the rocks and blending in small amounts of natural
minerals
according to a well-researched "recipe" to approximate the make up of
genuine moondust and moon dirt.

This is a lot of work, but McLemore believes it's worth the effort:
"NASA plans to send humans to the moon to live and work, and the place
is filled with gritty dust and powder that sticks to space suits,
equipment â to anything and everything," she explains. "It's even
inhaled into lungs. So we need high fidelity simulant to work with
here
on Earth to learn how to work in the real thing up there on the moon.
There simply aren't enough Apollo samples of real moondust to do all
the
research that needs to be done."

Simulated regolith can be used as a "guinea pig" to help researchers
find ways to make useful things from moon dirt. A favorite example is
concrete. Adding, for instance, epoxy to lunar regolith makes a very
strong concrete that could be used to build habitats or other
structures. Properly baked, a mixture of sulphur and moondust also
makes
good concrete, and other recipes are sure to be found as the research
progresses. On the moon and later on Mars, local resources are going
to
be crucial to astronauts who can't remain wholly dependent on Earth
for
supplies.

Working with simulated moondust may help researchers figure out how to
extract valuable elements and minerals from the real thing.

"For example, moondust and many moon rocks are rich in oxygen," says
Christian Schrader, a geologist on the Marshall regolith team. "If we
can figure out how to extract it, humans could actually use moondust
as
a source of breathable air in a future lunar habitat. And the oxygen,
along with the hydrogen that exists in the dirt, rocks, and possibly
in
polar ice, could be used to generate electricity using fuel cells,
which
make drinkable water as a by-product. Hydrogen and oxygen are also
rocket propellant."

It seems that the Stillwater Mine has "the right stuff" to use as
feedstock in creating the simulant so vital to lunar research. Some of
the rocks there are 2.7 billion years old.

"There's a huge magma chamber that formed under the ground there,"
says
Schrader. "The magma crystallized over time and formed thick layers of
what we call 'anorthosite.' The geology at Stillwater is roughly
analogous to how the moon's highland crust crystallized and cooled, so
it's a great place for us to go rock collecting."

That's why these scientists are heading up the side of a rocky
mountain
with sledge hammers and pick axes to pound away at big boulders that
promise to yield, albeit with great resistance, good rocks for making
regolith.

"Sometimes arctic winds blow down off the mountains and pummel us
while
we work," says Schrader. "It can be brutal."

But it's all in the name of science. So don't just stand there leaning
on your shovel! Start choppin'!

Special thanks: "The Stillwater Mine people have been very helpful in
so
many ways,"says Carole McLemore. "In addition to the simulant
feedstock,
they've donated manhours and trucks to help us. And the mine has a lot
of other advantages for us. Logging and mining roads crisscross the
mine, so we can get trucks in there for loading the tons of material
we
gather. We couldn't do it without them. "

Author: Dauna Coulter  | Editor: Dr.
Tony Phillips  | Credit: Science{at}NASA
http://science.nasa.gov>

more information

Footnote 1: "Sixteen Tons" is a song about the misery of coal mining,
first recorded in 1946 by U.S. country singer Merle Travis and
released
on his box set album Folk Songs of the However, it was Tennessee Ernie
Ford's 1955 rendition of "Sixteen Tons" that reached number one in the
Billboard charts. The song's authorship is generally attributed to
Merle
Travis, to whom it is credited on his 1947 recording. However,
Kentucky
ex-coalminer and singer/songwriter George S. Davis claimed to have
written this song in the 1930s.

Glenn Research Center funds this regolith effort through the Dust
Management Project under their Exploration Technology Development
Program.

Johnson Space Center's Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science
Directorate provided Apollo samples for testing and compositional
 analysis to aid in creating a realistic simulant. They also helped
gather data and other information about previous simulant work for
reference.

    People involved in the Lunar Regolith Simulant Development and
    Characterization effort:

    At Marshall Space Flight Center:
    VP33/John Fikes - Deputy Project Manager
    VP61/Dr. Doug Rickman - Chief Project Scientist (Geologist)
    BAE (Sub-contractor to Teledyne Brown Engineering)/Christian
    Schrader â Geologist
    Teledyne Brown Engineering/Hans Hoelzer (Mathematician - Figures
of
    Merit)
    Teledyne Brown Engineering/Kathy Fourroux (Software - Figures of
Merit)
    VP33/Carole McLemore - Project Manager

    At the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)
    Dr. Steve Wilson (Chemist)
    Dr. Doug Stoeser (Geologist)
    Dr. Greg Meeker
    Dr. Geoff Plumlee

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