Lunar Landing Pads Will Need to be Tough

Lunar Landing Pads Will Need to be Tough

As humanity heads back to the Moon, a silent danger lurks: exhaust plumes from multiple spacecraft will blast lunar dust into orbit, creating a potentially deadly obstacle course for future missions. The solution will be to build landing pads on the lunar surface out of the lunar regolith. Researchers simulated landing pads just like these and their tests showed they could handle the heat and force of the propellant exhaust from a landing spacec…