• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.40 no.1
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• pp.51-58
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• 2020

As interest in lunar exploration increases, studies on lunar surface environment simulation including a lunar soil simulant are being conducted. One of the problems when creating a vacuum environment with lunar soil is that it takes long time to reach high vacuum due to outgas from the soil. Most of the outgas is water, and the time to reach high vacuum can be significantly reduced by a pretreatment process that removes moisture adhering to the surface of the lunar soil before putting soil into a vacuum chamber. The existing soil drying methods were examined to determine how these methods were effective to remove moisture from the lunar simulant soil. Drying experiments of lunar soil samples were carried out using a dry oven, a microwave oven, direct heating method and a vacuum oven, and the results of the drying experiment were presented. Drying soil at 110℃ using a dry oven and drying soil by a microwave oven were not enough to remove moisture, and vacuum oven drying method and direct heating drying method at more than 200℃ were effective in water removal.

• KSCE Journal of Civil and Environmental Engineering Research
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• v.39 no.2
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• pp.327-333
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• 2019

For sustainable lunar exploration, the most required resources should be procured on site because it takes tremendous cost to transfer the resources from the Earth to the Moon. The technologies required for use of lunar resources refers to In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU). As the ISRU technology cannot be verified in the Earth, a lunar surface environment simulator is necessary to be prepared in advance. The Moon has no atmosphere, and the average temperature of the lunar surface reaches to $107^{\circ}C$ during the daytime and $-153^{\circ}C$ at night. The lunar surface is also covered with very fine soils with sharp particles that are electrostatically charged by solar radiation and solar wind. In this research, generation of vacuum environment with lunar soil mass in a chamber and simulation of electrostatically charged soils are taken into consideration. It was successful to make a vacuum environment of a chamber including lunar soils without soil disturbance by controlling evacuation rate of a vacuum chamber. And an experiment procedure for simulating the charged lunar soil was suggested by theoretical consideration in charging phenomena on lunar dust.

• Journal of the Korean Geotechnical Society
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• v.38 no.12
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• pp.125-134
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• 2022

The Global Expansion Roadmap published by the International Space Exploration Coordination Group, which is organized by space agencies around the world, presents future lunar exploration guidance and stresses a lunar habitat program to utilize lunar resources. The Moon attracts attention as an outpost for deep space exploration. Simulating lunar surface environments is required to evaluate the performances of various equipment for future lunar surface missions. In this paper, an experimental study was conducted to simulate high vacuum pressure and cryogenic temperature of the permanent shadow regions in the lunar south pole, which is a promising candidate for landing and outpost construction. The establishment of an efficient dirty thermal vacuum chamber (DTVC) operation process has never been presented. One-dimensional ground cooling tests were conducted with various vacuum pressures with the Korean Lunar Simulant type-1 (KLS-1) in DTVC. The most advantageous vacuum pressure was found to be 30-80 mbar, considering the cooling efficiency and equipment stability. However, peripheral cooling is also required to simulate a cryogenic for not sublimating ice in a high vacuum pressure. In this study, an efficient peripheral cooling operation process was proposed by applying the frost ratio concept.

• Journal of the Korean Society for Aeronautical & Space Sciences
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• v.47 no.1
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• pp.26-34
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• 2019

In this paper, a coarse lunar soil model is developed using discrete element method and its computed physical properties are compared with those of the actual lunar soil for its validation. The surface of the actual moon consists of numerous craters and rocks of various sizes, and it is covered with fine dry soil which seriously affects the landing stability of the lunar lander. Therefore, in consideration of the environment of the lunar regolith, the lunar soil is realized using discrete element method. To validate the coarse model of lunar soil, the simulations of the indentation test and the direct shear test are performed to check the physical properties(indentation depth, cohesion stress, internal friction angle). To examine the performance of the proposed model, the drop simulation of finite element model of single-leg landing gear is performed on proposed soil models with different particle diameters. The impact load delivered to the strut of the lander is compared to test results.