About Us
Get in touch: exolithlab@ucf.edu
Located in Orlando, Florida, the Exolith Lab is a space hardware testing and regolith research facility managed by the Florida Space Institute. The Exolith Lab develops and characterizes Lunar, Martian, and asteroid regolith (soil) simulants. The Exolith Lab works with NASA while also performing it’s own ISRU research led by Dr. Dan Britt.
The Exolith Lab enables space exploration, science, and education by making high-fidelity regolith simulants available to researchers and students around the globe.
We are happy to provide free consulting on simulants, dust mitigation, and other ISRU related topics.
What is Simulated?. A brief fact sheet on what our simulants do and don’t emulate about the extraterrestrial regoliths they’re based on.
Plant Growth in Simulants. Some tips for growing plants based on initial experiments by simulant users.
Publications
Long-Fox, J., Landsman, Z., Easter, P., Millwater, C., Britt, D., 2023. Geomechanical Properties of Lunar Regolith Simulants LHS-1 and LMS-1. Advances in Space Research, 71 (12), 5400-5412. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.asr.2023.02.034
Landsman, Z.A., Schultz, C.D., Britt, D.T., Peppin, M., Kobrick, R.L., Metzger, P.T., Orlovskaya, N., Phobos Regolith Simulants PGI-1 and PCA-1, Advances in Space Research (2021), doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.asr.2021.01.024
Britt, D. T., K. M. Cannon, K. Donaldson Hanna, J. Hogancamp, O. Poch, P. Beck, D. Martin, J. Escrig, L. Bonal, and P. T. Metzger (2019), Simulated asteroid materials based on carbonaceous chondrite mineralogies. MAPS, 54, 2067-2082, https://doi.org/10.1111/maps.13345
Metzger, P. T., D. T. Britt, S. Covey, C. Schultz, K. M. Cannon, K. D. Grossman, J. G. Mantovani, and R. P. Mueller (2019), Measuring the fidelity of asteroid regolith and cobble simulants. Icarus, 321, 632-646.
Cannon, K. M., D. T. Britt, T. M. Smith, R. F. Fritsche, and D. Batcheldor (2019), Mars Global Simulant MGS-1: A Rocknest-based Open Standard for Basaltic Martian Regolith Simulants. Icarus, 317, 470-478.
People
- Prof. Dan Britt – CLASS PI
- Jared Long-Fox – Chief Scientist
- Parks Easter – Chief Geotechnical Engineer
High-fidelity Regolith Simulants
UCF has ceased production of the simulant. The simulant is now offered by Space Resource Technologies, a spin-off company. You can reach Space Resources Technologies at the following email address: info@spaceresourcetech.com