NASA Begins Moon Mission Plume-Surface Interaction Tests

NASA's Latest Bid to Keep Moon Landings Clean Include Plume-Surface Interaction Tests

Engineers at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Virginia have activated their massive vacuum chamber to address one of the most pressing issues of landing on the Moon: what happens to the dusty surface when a spaceship touches down. They’re primarily looking at how engine exhaust stirs up the ground, or how all that dust, boulders, [...]

NASA Begins Moon Mission Plume-Surface Interaction Tests

5 Min Read What a Blast! NASA Langley Begins Plume-Surface Interaction Tests Views of the 60-foot vacuum sphere in the which the plume-surface interaction testing is happening. Credits: NASA/Joe Atkinson In March as Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Mission-1 landed on the Moon, researchers from NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, employed a novel camera system to capture first-of-it…