Moon's surface reproduced in Europe to prepare for future missions

euronews (in English)

Europe is seeking to place itself at the forefront of missions to the Moon with a facility covering almost 1,000 square metres that reproduces the lunar surface to train astronauts for future missions.

Transcript

00:00This giant sandbox represents one of the cutting-edge developments in space technology.

00:07It will soon contain 900 tons of sand and various rocks to be a reproduction of the surface of the moon.

00:14It is here, near Cologne, that astronauts from Europe and around the world will be able to prepare for the next lunar mission.

00:23The facility opened its doors on Wednesday, and it's unique in the world.

00:28This installation is unique because here we can find everything we can find on the moon.

00:33We have really small and fine lunar sand, and it's dangerous if you breathe it,

00:39or it's dangerous for the equipment, so you have to learn the behavior.

00:45Then we also have the lunar rocks.

00:47Well, they're earth rocks, but really identical to the rocks we'll find on the moon.

00:53By 2026, this facility will have a structure that also reproduces the gravity of the moon.

01:01Another exciting feature will be a simulated base,

01:04so that lunar missions lasting a week or more can be carried out here first.

01:10And the particular luminosity of the moon will be reproduced as well.

01:14Also, as you can see, the illumination is very peculiar, very special, right?

01:19On the moon there is no atmosphere, so there is a very, very sharp contrast between an intense darkness and this intense light.

01:28People who have experienced it, they really tell you it's challenging.

01:31It's not something we are used to.

01:34The infrastructure is also aimed at manufacturers.

01:37They will be able to test their equipment, such as rovers or suits, and their resistance to extreme conditions.

01:44It's important because we want things to fail on Earth before they fail on the moon.

01:48We want to test everything here to its extreme so that we know how the things are working,

01:54how we distribute also tasks between astronauts, robots and teams on ground.

02:00And we want really the technologies to be tested in real environments, in realistic environments.

02:07The project was launched ten years ago, and all the designers of the project have just one objective,

02:13to give astronauts the feeling that they already have one foot on the moon.

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