Daniel Britt

University of Central Florida | UCF · Department of Physics

Efficient excavation for lunar resource acquisition and infrastructure development in the low gravity (1/6 g) environment requires force reduction techniques such as percussion to enable equipment to maintain traction and lower required force outputs. This study investigates the efficiency of percussive excavation as compared to static excavation....

Safe and efficient rover mobility is crucial for long-term, large-scale human and robotic presence on the Moon and other planetary bodies. However, lunar and planetary regolith is notoriously difficult to operate in, a problem exacerbated by the extreme environments on extraterrestrial surfaces (fine dust, low gravity, thin/no atmosphere). To ensur...

Lunar meteorites are the most diverse and readily available specimens for the direct laboratory study of lunar surface materials. In addition to informing us about the composition and heterogeneity of lunar material, measurements of their thermo‐physical properties provide data necessary to inform the models of the thermal evolution of the lunar su...

Safe and efficient mobility is a fundamental requirement for planetary exploration, resource utilization, and infrastructure development. Incomplete testing during research and development of planetary mobility systems poses significant risk to mission success. Gaps in testing can arise from improper materials (wheel materials or regolith simulants...

Lunar exploration and infrastructure development fundamentally relies on the ability to safely and efficiently interact with the lunar surface. Failure to accurately quantify relevant characteristics of the lunar regolith for exploration, resource utilization, and infrastructure development poses significant risk to hardware and personnel. Such cha...

COLDArm for Efficient Lunar Science

Investigating the Effects of Fine Particles on Lunar Regolith Simulant Angle of Repose

Investigating the Effects of Fine Particles on Lunar Regolith Simulant Angle of Repose

Introduction: The ease of mobility of planetary rovers is determined not only by the specifications of the rover itself, but also by the physical properties of the local regolith. To determine optimal rover designs and maximize the safety of equipment and personnel on planetary surfaces, it is necessary to have a thorough understanding of how diffe...

Introduction: The space-faring capabilities of humans are dependent on the ability to interact with planetary surfaces safely and efficiently and utilize local resources. Since planetary regolith will be the primary feedstock for in situ resource utilization (ISRU) and infrastructure development activities, the site-specific geomechanical propertie...

We have developed a production method of a granular lunar permanently shadowed region (PSR) icy regolith simulant. With this method the icy simulant has high porosity, high fidelity, and it can be produced in large quantities.

LHS-2: A Novel Lunar Highlands Regolith Simulant for Exolith Lab’s Regolith Bin

Introduction: Planetary exploration and infrastructure development rely on safe and efficient locomotion for the transport of personnel, equipment, and resources. To save time, money, and energy and to optimize rover-based operations on the lunar surface, it is key to quantify how the physical properties of lunar regolith and the lunar environment...

Planetary exploration and infrastructure development rely on safe and efficient locomotion for the transport of personnel, equipment, and resources. To save time, money, and energy and to optimize rover-based operations on the lunar surface, it is key to quantify how the physical properties of lunar regolith and the lunar environment (reduced gravi...

Designing rovers and planning rover-based operations on the lunar surface requires knowledge of the surface, the systems interacting with the surface, and the effects of those interactions on the surface and shallow subsurface layers. Development of this knowledge relies on the ability to both test and predict forces, displacements, efficiency, and...

Lunar exploration and infrastructure development requires safe and efficient loco-motion to transport supplies, resources, and personnel, but there are no open-access facilities in which to quantitatively test rover wheels to study planetary terramechanics. The Regolith Interactions for the Development of Extraterrestrial Rovers (RIDER) testbed (Fi...

Introduction: With an increasing interest in the exploration of the Lunar South Pole, there is a growing need for facilities that simulate this environment. Rovers and other hardware planned for use on the Moon require testing on Earth to ensure their functionality, much of which involves the use of regolith simulants. To help further the availabil...

Introduction: Current U.S. Space Policy [1] states that NASA shall establish a permanent presence on the Moon. During the ~75 hour visit of Apollo 17 in De-cember 1972, astronauts spent only ~22 hours outside the Lunar Module on the lunar surface. Future lunar operations will require surface activities of much longer duration. Earth-based terramech...

Introduction: Simulating lunar dust clouds will be beneficial in addressing dust mitigation efforts by computationally testing alternative rover wheel and fender designs, and different operational modes. The Simulator for Planetary Interactions of Dust and Regolith (SPIDR) is a Discrete Element Method (DEM) tool that can be used to model dust (< 50...

Establishing and maintaining a permanent human presence on planetary surfaces requires vehicles (e.g., rovers, hoppers, walkers) to transport supplies, resources, materials, and personnel for exploration and infrastructure development. Since extraterrestrial permanence relies on efficient locomotion, likely on common paths and roadways, characteriz...

Establishing and maintaining a permanent human presence on planetary surfaces requires vehicles (e.g., rovers, hoppers, walkers) to transport supplies, resources, materials, and personnel for exploration and infrastructure development. Since extraterrestrial permanence relies on efficient locomotion, likely on common paths and roadways, characteriz...

Decreased particle size of the Trojan simulant to D < 25 μm and took spectra from 2.5 to 25 μm wavelength. Observed increase in emission from 9 to 12 μm wavelength range.

The effect of sample mass on the angle of repose of lunar regolith simulants, specifically Exolith Lab's Lunar Highlands (LHS-1) simulant

We are developing Lunar Permanently Shadowed Region icy regolith simulant, which is a mixture of Exolith Lunar Highlands Simulant and water ice. Water content is controllable. Icy simulant is highly porous and with low cohesion.

We are developing a Jupiter Trojan asteroid regolith simulant to mimic their expected minerology and spectral properties. NASA's Lucy mission is on its way to provide us with new knowledge, and one day the JAXA OCEANOS mission will ultimately return Trojan samples. Meanwhile a number of spectral mixture models have been tried to identify the compos...

iPoster: https://dps54-aas.ipostersessions.com/Default.aspx?s=48-80-73-87-E7-3B-90-1D-0E-78-AF-0C-61-7D-62-B6

Introduction: Since mineralogy dictates the physical and chemical properties of lunar materials, differing simulant mineralogy can be expected to significantly change simulant properties. These differences directly impact the accuracy of the results in studies that are performed with inappropriate simulants. This work statistically compares the she...

Introduction • Mineralogy dictates the physical properties of lunar materials o Differences in mineralogy directly impact the accuracy of the results in studies that use inappropriate simulants • Comparison of the shear strength (σ s) of Exolith Lab lunar highlands simulant (LHS-1) [1] to a "simplified" version of LHS-1 (LHS-1 Bulk) o LHS-1 Bulk do...

Introduction: The utilization of wheeled vehicles for the exploration of the lunar surface poses many challenges that must be addressed and quantified during terrestrial testing to ensure the safety and longevity of flight hardware and personnel. There is a gap in knowledge of wheel-regolith interactions, and scientific studies of the trafficabilit...

Design goal: Versatile system that can adapt to use different wheels and motors for scientific investigations of rover locomotion • RIDER provides gravity offloading utilizing a linear actuator system. This will allow the user to apply a custom load onto the wheel to simulate low-gravity environments with a known, controllable applied load (simulat...

Specific Gravity of Exolith Lab Lunar Regolith Simulants

Lunar construction and in situ re-source utililization (ISRU) processes will likely involve the transport of regolith using conveyor and funnel sys-tems. To maximize the efficiency of such systems, sys-tematic characterization of the granular flow properties of lunar regolith is necessary, especially since the highly angular grains of lunar regolit...

Lunar construction and in situ re-source utililization (ISRU) processes will likely involve the transport of regolith using conveyor and funnel sys-tems. To maximize the efficiency of such systems, sys-tematic characterization of the granular flow properties of lunar regolith is necessary, especially since the highly angular grains of lunar regolit...

Landing sites for the upcoming NASA Artemis program are in south polar region highlands, near permanently shadowed craters (PSCs) thought to contain water ice. The presence of water ice will alter the geotechnical properties of the regolith, which could impact hardware assets and other mission requirements. Geotechnical experiments performed on dry...

Quantification and Comparison of Rheologic Properties of Simulated Agglutinates as a Component of Lunar Regolith Simulant

Motivation: Upcoming robotic and human missions to the Moon (e.g., NASA's VIPER and Artemis) will begin the process of establishing infrastructure for a long-term lunar presence, as plans are underway [1] to achieve this at highland [2] landing sites at the south pole. The logistical requirements for a sustained presence on the lunar surface necess...

To make a Trojan simulant, need to constrain properties of the objects. We have reviewed the literature and summarized the evidence for Trojan properties.

To make a Trojan simulant, need to constrain properties of the objects. We have reviewed the literature and summarized the evidence for Trojan properties.

Background: Planned robotic (e.g., VIPER) and human (e.g., Artemis) missions will begin the process of establishing infrastructure for a long-term presence on the Moon, as NASA has plans [1] to achieve this at highland [2] landing sites at the lunar south pole. The logistical requirements for a sustained presence on the lunar surface necessitate a...

Shear strength, a measure of material strength that is caused by opposing forces when one part of a body is pushed in a specific direction, and another part of the body pushes back in the opposite direction, resisting the force. Quantification of shear strength, and its Mohr-Coulomb parameters of cohesion (c) and angle of internal friction (ϕ), is...

Designs of Lunar in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) systems typically involve transportation, processing, and storage of regolith via conveyor, chute, and/or funnel equipment. To effectively design these systems and maximize their efficiency, specific details of the granular flow of regolith, such as mass flow rates, must be quantified. An added o...

Murrili, the third meteorite recovered by the Desert Fireball Network, is analyzed using mineralogy, oxygen isotopes, bulk chemistry, physical properties, noble gases, and cosmogenic radionuclides. The modal mineralogy, bulk chemistry, magnetic susceptibility, physical properties, and oxygen isotopes of Murrili point to it being an H5 ordinary chon...

Many large cold traps exist at both lunar poles where temperatures never exceed 110 K annually, allowing the preservation of water ice. Much has been learned about these regions from orbital measurements, but in situ access is needed to truly understand the abundance, distribution, texture, and chemistry of volatiles that might be present in the re...

Measurements of the low‐temperature thermodynamic and physical properties of meteorites provide fundamental data for the study and understanding of asteroids and other small bodies. Of particular interest are the CM carbonaceous chondrites, which represent a class of primitive meteorites that record substantial chemical information concerning the e...

Proximity observations by OSIRIS-REx and Hayabusa2 provided clues on the shape evolution processes of the target asteroids, (101955) Bennu and (162173) Ryugu. Their oblate shapes with equatorial ridges, or the so-called top shapes, may have evolved due to their rotational conditions at present and in the past. Different shape evolution scenarios we...

Proximity observations by OSIRIS-REx and Hayabusa2 provided clues on the shape evolution processes of the target asteroids, (101955) Bennu and (162173) Ryugu. Their oblate shapes with equatorial ridges, or the so-called top shapes, may have evolved due to their rotational conditions at present and in the past. Different shape evolution scenarios we...

When creating asteroid regolith simulant, it is necessary to have a model of asteroid regolith to guide and to evaluate the simulant. We created a model through evaluation and synthesis of the available data sets including (1) the returned sample from Itokawa by the Hayabusa spacecraft, (2) imagery from the Hayabusa and NEAR spacecraft visiting Ito...

The two on-going sample return space missions, Hayabusa2 and OSIRIS-REx are going to return to Earth asteroid regolith from the carbonaceous near-Earth asteroids Ryugu and Bennu. The two main processes that lead to regolith production are the micrometeorite bombardment and the thermal cracking. Here we report the production of a weak simulant mater...

We report all available measurements on strength of meteorites, primarily focusing on compressive and tensile strengths and supplementary data such as Young's modulus, Poisson's ratio, elastic sound wave velocities, density, porosity, and sample sizes. These data are solely taken from the original papers to avoid misprints and other issues. The dat...

NASA has developed a "Figure of Merit" method to grade the fidelity of lunar simulants for scientific and engineering purposes. Here we extend the method to grade asteroid simulants, both regolith and cobble variety, and we apply the method to the newly developed asteroid regolith and cobble simulant UCF/DSI-CI-2. The reference material that is use...

When creating asteroid regolith simulant, it is necessary to have a model of asteroid regolith to guide and to evaluate the simulant. We created a model through evaluation and synthesis of the available data sets including (1) the returned sample from Itokawa by the Hayabusa spacecraft, (2) imagery from the Hayabusa and NEAR spacecraft visiting Ito...

Food production on Mars is usually thought of in terms of growing plants to partially support small exploration crews for short- to medium-term stays. Here, we consider the more radical goal of producing enough food on Mars to sustain a permanent settlement of private citizens that increases to 1 million people within 100 Earth years. We modeled a...

A set of high‐fidelity simulated asteroid materials, or simulants, was developed based on the mineralogy of carbonaceous chondrite meteorites. Three varieties of simulant were developed based on CI1 chondrites (typified by Orgueil), CM2 chondrites (typified by Murchison), and CR2/3 chondrites (multiple samples). The simulants were designed to repli...

In keeping with the Luxembourg government's initiative to support the future use of space resources, ASIME 2018 was held in Belval, Luxembourg on April 16-17, 2018. The goal of ASIME 2018: Asteroid Intersections with Mine Engineering, was to focus on asteroid composition for advancing the asteroid in-space resource utilisation domain. What do we kn...

NASA has developed a “Figure of Merit” method to grade the fidelity of lunar simulants for scientific and engineering purposes. Here we extend the method to grade asteroid simulants, both regolith and cobble variety, and we apply the method to the newly developed asteroid regolith and cobble simulant UCF/DSI-CI-2. The reference material that is use...

This paper describes the processes and challenges of producing high-fidelity asteroid simulants. DSI (in partnership with UCF) is producing four families of carbonaceous chondrite simulants: CI, CR, CM, and C2. Britt provided target mineralogies, recommendations for researcher safety considerations, and target physical characteristics of selected m...

One of outstanding questions about primitive asteroid surfaces with respect to in situ resources utilization (ISRU) and the potential to retrieve boulders off asteroidal surface is the effect of thermal cycling in near-Earth space on the strength of the boulder material. To address this issue we used the UCF/DSI Orgueil-type CI simulant formed into...

The composition and physical properties of martian regolith are dramatically better understood compared to just a decade ago, particularly through the use of X-ray diffraction by the Curiosity rover. Because there are no samples of this regolith on Earth, researchers and engineers rely on terrestrial simulants to test future hardware and address fu...

The composition and physical properties of martian regolith are dramatically better understood compared to just a decade ago, particularly through the use of X-ray diffraction by the Curiosity rover. Because there are no samples of this material on Earth, researchers and engineers rely on terrestrial simulants to test future hardware and address fu...