Apollo lunar regolith samples are not available in quantity for engineering studies with In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU). Therefore, with expectation of a return to the Moon, dozens of regolith (soil) simulants have been developed, to some extent a result of inefficient distribution of NASA-sanctioned simulants. In this paper, we review many of these simulants, with evaluations of their sho...

Incidents involving the release of chemical agents can pose significant risks to public health. In such an event, emergency decontamination of affected casualties may need to be undertaken to reduce injury and possible loss of life. To ensure these methods are effective, human volunteer trials (HVTs) of decontamination protocols, using simulant contaminants, have been conducted. Simulants must ...

Direct experimentation with chemical warfare agents (CWA) to study important problems such as their permeation across protective barrier materials, decontamination of equipment and facilities, or the environmental transport and fate of CWAs is not feasible because of the obvious toxicity of the CWAs and associated restrictions on their laboratory use. The common practice is to use "simulants," ...

The overall objective of this project is to provide a scientific basis for safely processing complexant-containing high-level tank wastes for disposal. Our key goals are to identify methods for preparing realistic complexant-containing tank waste simulants, and to use those simulants to determine the relative importance of organic complexants and their breakdown products on the partitioning of ...

The Martian moon Phobos is the target of upcoming JAXA Moons eXploration (MMX) mission. There are currently no known samples Phobos, so spacecraft hardware testing and scientific studies require regolith simulants. Here, we present two new simulants: Captured Asteroid-1 (PCA-1) Giant Impact (PGI-1). These simulants reflect hypotheses for Phobos’s formation, thus broad possibilities composition....

Lunar samples are not readily available for In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) studies, necessary for preparations for a return to the Moon with landers, robots, and astronauts. Lunar soil simulants have been produced as substitutes for the real thing; BUT how good are they? JSC-1 and 1A were produced only to approximate the geotechnical properties of lunar soil, with its natural glassy compon...

The migration of packaging material constituents into food is a product of the interaction between the food and packaging material. This phenomenon is of importance because some migrating substances may be toxicologically carcinogenic and endanger the consumer safety. Polystyrenes are used in many food-contact applications for the packaging of aqueous-based, fatty and dry foods. The correlation...

Preparations for lunar missions involve the extensive use of simulants of lunar surface materials. Since many planned operations engage the mechanical properties of the regolith, it is of utmost importance to assure that the simulants adequately represent the engineering properties of actual lunar materials. To address this critical issue, we are conducting an experimental and modeling effort t...

Chemical warfare agent (CWA) simulants as well as their degradation and hydrolysis products were detected from surfaces using thermal desorption ion mobility spectrometry (TD-IMS). CWA simulant materials that closely mimic the chemical structures of real CWA G/V-type nerve and S-type vesicant simulants were used in this study. Reduced mobility constants (K0) in air were reported for 20 compound...

Gaseous dimethyl dioxirane (DMDO) was evaluated as a decontaminant for simulants of chemical and biological warfare agents (CBW). Isolated DMDO was present as a liquid in CFC 113 or the fluorinated ether, Novec HFE 7100TM (3M) and was easily vaporized under reduced pressure. The Hagent simulant, thioanisole, and the G-agent simulants, paraoxon and diphenyl chlorophosphate (DPCP), were efficient...