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NASA Begins Moon Mission Plume-Surface Interaction Tests

Page: NASA article by Joe Atkinson, Langley public affairs, dated 26 August 2026. Editor's notes: first published "in December" (the year isn't printed) and "revised Aug. 26, 2026 with an update on a new phase of testing"; "corrected Sept. 2, 2026 to reflect that the ethane plume simulation system is not being operated by Purdue University". https://www.nasa.gov/missions/artemis/nasa-begins-moon-mission-plume-surface-interaction-tests/. Fetched 2026-10-02T04:02:27Z. File: sources/moon-base/nasa-gov-missions-artemis-nasa-begins-moon-mission-plume-surface-interaction-tests.md.

Summary. A ground test campaign at Langley's 60-foot vacuum sphere fires small engines into a bin of lunar regolith simulant to measure what a lander's plume throws up, "to improve predictive models and influence the design of space hardware" for Artemis IV and the Moon Base. The quantities measured are those of data gap DN-017 L (the pairing is the wiki's).

Key points

  • Why: "the hazards that may occur when a lander's engine plumes blast away at lunar dust, soil, and rocks"; "As NASA works to return humans to the Moon starting with Artemis IV in 2028 and develop a Moon Base". Test lead Ashley Korzun: "If I'm in a spacecraft and I'm going to move all that regolith while landing, some of that's going to hit my lander. Some of it's going to go out toward other things — payloads, science experiments, eventually rovers and other assets."
  • First round: "an ethane plume simulation system designed by NASA's Stennis Space Center … and built by Purdue University", "a maximum of about 100 pounds of thrust", fired into "a roughly six-and-a-half-foot diameter, one-foot-deep bin of simulated lunar regolith, called Black Point-1". Each test lasts "about six seconds".
  • What is measured: "crater formation, angle and height of the ejecta sheet, spatial distribution of solid ejecta, and the speed of the regolith particles as they get blasted out of the bin", with instruments including "a version of the Stereo Cameras for Lunar Plume Surface Studies system" that imaged Blue Ghost Mission 1's landing in 2025. Two SCALPSS team members are pictured in the control room.
  • Second round, "Later this year": "a 14-inch, 3D-printed hybrid rocket motor developed at Utah State University", "around 35 pounds of thrust", hot exhaust; both systems "at various heights".
  • Mars: the set-up "is modular by design and also can prepare NASA for missions to Mars": a Mars simulant "more like sand", hardware swapped "to represent future Mars landers", and chamber pressure set to Mars's.
  • For the HLS: Daniel Stubbs, of the "Human Landing Systems plume and aero environments team" at Marshall: "one of the most flight-relevant and highly instrumented plume-surface interaction test series NASA has ever conducted"; the data "will be critical in developing and validating models … ensuring mission success for the human landing systems and the safety of our astronauts".

What it doesn't say

Any data gap, tech gap or Moon Base phase; results.

DN-017 L Plume ejecta particle velocity · DN-005 M Mars plume ejecta · #1101 Lunar Precision Landing and Hazard Avoidance · Human Landing System