In March, NASA researchers used a new camera system to capture images of the interaction between the Firefly Aerospace Blue Ghost Mission-1 lander's engine plumes and the lunar surface.
As part of NASA's Artemis Campaign, the data will help researchers understand the dangers that can arise when the lander's engine plumes explode lunar dust, soil and rocks.
The data will also be used by NASA's commercial partners to develop human landing systems to safely transport astronauts from lunar orbit to the lunar surface and back, starting with Artemis III.
To better understand the science of lunar landings, a team at NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, initiated a series of plume-surface interaction tests inside a massive 60-foot spherical vacuum chamber.
Ashley Korzun
PSI Test Manager at NASA Langley
“This ground-based plume-surface interaction test is the most complex test of its kind ever conducted in a vacuum chamber,” said Ashley Korzun, test manager at NASA Langley. “If I'm on a spacecraft and I'm going to move all this regolith during landing, some of it will end up in my lander. Some of it will go to other uses – payloads, science experiments, eventually Mars rovers and other assets. Understanding this physics is critical to crew safety and mission success.”
The campaign, which will run until spring 2026, should provide a treasure trove of data that researchers can use to improve predictive models and influence the design of space equipment. As Korzun mentioned, this is a large undertaking involving numerous NASA centers, academic institutions, and commercial organizations, both small and large.
Korzun's team will test two types of propulsion systems in the vacuum sphere. For the first round of testing this fall, they are using an ethane plume modeling system developed by NASA's Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, and built and operated by Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana. The ethane system generates a maximum of about 100 pounds of thrust—imagine the force required to lift or support a 100-pound person. It heats up but doesn't burn.
Once testing on ethane is completed, the second round of testing will use a 14-inch 3D printed hybrid rocket motor developed at Utah State University in Logan, Utah, and recently completed testing at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.. It produces about 35 pounds of thrust by igniting both the solid propellant and a stream of oxygen gas, creating a hot, powerful stream of rocket exhaust, simulating a real rocket engine but on a smaller scale for this series of tests.
The researchers will test both propulsion systems at different altitudes by launching them into a container approximately six and a half feet in diameter and one foot deep made of artificial lunar regolith called Black dot-1 which has jagged, cohesive properties similar to lunar regolith.
“This gives us a huge range of test conditions,” Korzun said, “to be able to talk about all the different types of spacecraft going to the Moon, and to be able to understand what they're going to do when they land or try to get off the surface.”
Daniel Stubbs
HLS Plume and Aerospace Team Engineer at NASA Marshall
A number of different tools, including a version a specialized camera system that captured the interaction of the plume with the surface during Blue Ghost's landingwill capture data and images from the tests, each lasting only about six seconds. The instruments will measure cratering, the speed and angle of ejected particles, and the shape of engine plumes.
Korzun sees this test campaign as more than just a one-off, lunar-specific project. The entire operation is modular in design and could also prepare NASA for missions to Mars. The lunar regolith simulator can be replaced with a Mars simulator, which is more like sand. Pieces of equipment and instrumentation can be unscrewed and replaced to represent future Mars ships. Instead of reducing the pressure in the vacuum sphere to a very low pressure like on the Moon, it can be adjusted to a pressure that mimics the atmosphere of the Red Planet. “Mars has always been on our road maps,” Korzun said.
But at the moment the Moon looks big.
“This test campaign is one of the most mission-critical and highly instrumented series of plume-surface interaction tests that NASA has ever conducted,” said Daniel Stubbs, an engineer in the Human Landing Systems Plume and Aerospace Environment group at NASA Marshall. “Data from these tests at NASA Langley will be critical to developing and validating models to predict plume-surface interaction effects on landings on the Moon and even Mars, ensuring mission success for human landing systems and the safety of our astronauts.”
Through the Artemis Campaign, NASA will send astronauts to explore the Moon for scientific discoveries, economic benefits, and the foundation for the first manned missions to Mars—for the benefit of all.
For more information about Artemis visit:
Joe Atkinson
NASA Langley Research Center
