About Us
Get in touch: exolithlab@ucf.edu
Located in Orlando, Florida, Exolith Lab is a not-for-profit organization largely funded by CLASS, The Center for Lunar & Asteroid Surface Science at UCF. Exolith Lab develops and produces Lunar, Martian, and asteroid regolith (soil) simulants. Exolith Lab works with NASA while also performing it’s own ISRU research led by Dr. Dan Britt and Dr. Zoe Landsman.
Exolith Lab enables space exploration, science, and education by making high-fidelity regolith simulants available to researchers and students around the globe.
We also maintain the Planetary Simulant Database as a resource for the community, with information on historic and current planetary simulants. 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
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
- Mike Conroy – Project Manager
- Anna Metke – Director of Operations
- Dr. Zoe Landsman – Chief Scientist
- Jared Long-Fox – Geotech Specialist
- Christian Sipe – Lead ISRU Engineer
- Lucas Weber – Chief Engineer
- Alexander Madison – Project Manager
- Konrad Krol – Operations Manager
- Parks Easter – Lab Manager
- Makayla Peppin – Geotechnical Research Associate
- Catherine Millwater – Geotechnical Research Associate
- Rebecca Rodriguez – Environmental Engineer
- Nicholas Moser-Mancewicz – ISRU Engineer
- John Hatchitt – Industrial Engineering Consultant
- Josh Conway – Simulant Engineer
- Ana-Paula Dovali – Simulant Engineer
- Jack Schultz – Simulant Engineer
- Emma Torregrosa – Simulant Engineer
- Sheina Rodriguez – Simulant Engineer
- Steven Elsaid – Simulant Engineer
High-fidelity Regolith Simulants
These can be purchased at ExolithSimulants.com.