Lunar Highlands (LHS-1) High-Fidelity Regolith Simulant

The Lunar Highlands Simulant (LHS-1) is a high-fidelity, mineral-based simulant appropriate for a generic or average highlands location on the Moon. The highlands are considered to be the “lighter” regions of the moon’s surface which is mainly comprised of plagioclase, or often referred to as Anorthosite. The simulant is not made of a single terrestrial lithology, but accurately captures the texture of lunar regolith by combining both mineral and rock fragments in accurate proportions referencing the returned Apollo mission regolith.  The simulant is made of several terrestrial minerals, and accurately captures the texture of lunar regolith by combining both mineral and rock fragments (i.e., polymineralic grains) in precise  proportions. The particle size distribution of the simulant is targeted to match that of typical Apollo soils. LHS-1 does not currently simulate agglutinates or nanophase iron.  However, our agglutinated simulant, LHS-1-25A, does simulate agglutinates characteristi