The key to the Moon – Enclosure of the LUNA hall now complete
| Space
The key to the Moon – Enclosure of the LUNA hall now complete
The new LUNA hall
The enclosure of the LUNA hall has now been completed. In the coming weeks and months, the interior of the facility will be prepared for use, with measuring equipment installed, microbiological samples taken and then finally the lunar regolith soil will be laid down.
Many may know the key to success, and a few know the key to the heart, but only ten people have the key to the Moon – and I'm personally acquainted with all of them. In fact, it looks utterly unspectacular, just like your average door key.
But let's start by going back to the beginning. For a few months, the LUNA hall – a joint ESA and DLR project – has been under construction at DLR's site in Cologne, directly opposite the European Astronaut Centre. The vast hall will house a re-creation of the Moon, or rather its surface, that will serve as a test, simulation and training facility for astronauts and robots, as well as a resource for research and technology development for the scientific community.
Handover of the LUNA hall
The LUNA hall is handed over to the responsible team at ESA and DLR (from left: Petra Mittler, Jürgen Schlutz, Hilka Engel-Junglas and Matthias Maurer).
In a major milestone, this week we finally got the key to the hall. Following a thorough inspection, ESA, which was responsible for the construction of LUNA, was able to certify that its general contractor had done an excellent job and the building was ready to be handed over. DLR has been working with ESA over the last few years to design the hall's scientific equipment, and we are now poised to turn LUNA into a Moon-simulation facility.
The first bags of regolith are unloaded
The bags contain a material similar to lunar soil, which is spread in the LUNA hall. The aim is to recreate the surface of the Moon as realistically as possible.
The schedule is tight though. On the day the keys were handed over, the first big bags of lunar regolith simulant – a material based on lunar soil – began arriving by truck and were transported into the hall. For the time being, this simulant will remain bagged up, as we first need to install measuring devices, lay fibre-optic cables for seismic measurements, conduct radar measurements and extract and evaluate microbiological samples. All this needs to happen before the dust is laid down and the lunar surface is recreated in the hall.
Once it opens in September, we hope that LUNA will itself become a key for future Moon missions. We hope, too, that you'll follow our progress as we set about creating our 'Moon on Earth', and look forward to our joint mission!
See you soon on the LUNA blog
One last wave from the hall. Stay tuned for the next blog post, as the LUNA story continues.
