The European Space Agency (ESA) on Tuesday shared an intriguing video on its social media handles, unveiling its plan to recreate the Moon's surface on Earth. For the ambitious project, a group of ESA experts from the UK and Germany collaborated with a mine in Greenland to procure terrestrial rock samples with similar properties to material found on the Moon.
''To do this, we needed rock samples with similar proprieties to materials found on the Moon. Some of our experts from the LUNA and VULCAN facilities recently travelled to Greenland, to start a collaboration with a mine that will provide us with anorthosite, an igneous, light-coloured rock that has similar properties to material found on the Moon,'' the video was captioned.
Watch the video here:
The agency plans to use these environments to train astronauts who might one day go to the Moon, ''offering a full immersion and simulation of the lunar surface activities.''
''They will also be used to develop new technologies, including those that use local lunar materials to generate oxygen, water, and building materials, for instance,'' ESA added.
ESA further revealed that they are building two testbeds at their European Astronaut Centre, one of which will mimic the lunar mare regions, and huge lava plains on the lunar surface. The other testbed will simulate a dusty lunar highland using about 20 tonnes of anorthosite.
Reacting to the video, one user wrote, ''The big problem on the moon is the regolith and its gravity, and how to simulate it on earth for training lunar spacewalks and its impacts in human health and new lunar space technologies.''
Another commented, ''Wow, this is amazing! Will this be open to public? I ain't no astronaut but I want to see the moon,''
Notably, the European Space Agency (ESA) is an international organisation with 22 Member States. Its mission is to shape the development of Europe's space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world.
ESA's programmes are designed to find out more about Earth, its immediate space environment, our Solar System, and the Universe, as well as to develop satellite-based technologies and services, and to promote European industries.
