{"id":207268,"date":"2026-03-26T19:01:15","date_gmt":"2026-03-26T19:01:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/207268\/"},"modified":"2026-03-26T19:01:15","modified_gmt":"2026-03-26T19:01:15","slug":"ucf-students-help-nasa-with-plans-to-return-to-the-moon","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/207268\/","title":{"rendered":"UCF students help NASA with plans to return to the moon"},"content":{"rendered":"

OVIEDO, Fla. \u2014\u00a0Artemis II sets the stage for future Artemis missions, when astronauts will once again set foot on the moon.<\/p>\n

Besides this launch, there are several more things that need to be done on Earth to get humans to the moon.<\/p>\n

A lot of that work is being done by professors and students at the University of Central Florida.<\/p>\n

Noah Brockhoff, a mechanical engineering student at the University of Central Florida, spent 300 hours to build a simulated lunar lander.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn many respects, this is my baby,\u201d the Orlando native said. \u201cThere\u2019s a lot of research that\u2019s gone into this.\u201d<\/p>\n

The simulated lander is being used to understand the impacts from the moon\u2019s dust and rocks, known as lunar regolith.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe reason why we study this and the reason why this is important is because if this was an actual physical lunar lander, (there) would be a regolith ejecta that\u2019s getting sent at terminal velocity upwards into the lunar lander, which could cause equipment failure, potential hazards to humans,\u201d said Brockhoff.<\/p>\n

To simulate how lunar dust impacts a landing spacecraft, Brockhoff experiments inside the Exolith Lab<\/a>, a warehouse UCF\u2019s Florida Space Institute outfitted in Seminole County with 120 tons of simulated lunar soil.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis lunar soil is a mixture of all the minerals in the correct ratios and the correct particle sizes,\u201d said UCF Planetary Science Research Professor Phil Metzger. \u201cSo it was a highly engineered replication of lunar soil. It\u2019s the highest fidelity in the world and the largest amount of it anywhere in the world.\u201d<\/p>\n

Metzger spent 30 years at NASA before becoming a research professor at UCF.<\/p>\n

He\u2019s also the director of the Stephen W. Hawking Center for Microgravity Research and Education<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Filled with all kinds of student-led tests and experiments, the Exolith Lab, Metzger says, is key to understanding what it will be like when we return astronauts to the moon\u2019s surface.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think we bring a lot of expertise to the lunar and space exploration community for developing technologies that interact with the soil,\u201d said Metzger, who specializes in lunar soil. \u201cThat includes landing on the soil, driving in it, excavating it, extracting resources from it, constructing, building things with it, and studying it for science.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lunar dust is extremely abrasive, capable of damaging a spacecraft. Understanding how moon dust reacts to a lunar lander or rover is vital to keeping astronauts safe.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe need to understand how far away do you need to be from your hardware when you launch or land on the moon,\u201d said Metzger.<\/p>\n

NASA is collaborating with UCF to figure this out, along with other critical issues before sending humans back to the moon.<\/p>\n

Built entirely by UCF students, another experiment, which includes a wheel that goes back and forth over the simulated lunar sand, is making 500 laps a day and funded by NASA.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis will help NASA decide what materials to use on lunar rover wheels so that we can have long-term reliability as we operate on the Moon,\u201d said Metzger.<\/p>\n

Metzger lists three reasons for going back to the moon.<\/p>\n

First, the moon\u2019s geology can help unlock the history of our solar system and how it formed.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe moon is like Earth\u2019s attic. It stores the record of our solar system because it doesn\u2019t have the weathering and the plate tectonics like the Earth does to destroy all that evidence,\u201d he said. \u201cSo by going up to the moon and digging in the lunar soil, we can unravel the history of lunar geology, which teaches about the history of the entire inner solar system.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The second reason for returning to the moon is for resources.<\/p>\n

\u201cLunar ice is a great resource for making rocket fuel,\u201d Metzger said.<\/p>\n

The third reason is that the moon is the best place to prepare for living and working on Mars, and because it\u2019s closer than Mars, it\u2019ll be easier to respond to challenges that arise.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat allows us to develop technologies easily in a harsher environment,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OVIEDO, Fla. \u2014\u00a0Artemis II sets the stage for future Artemis missions, when astronauts will once again set foot…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":207269,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[15636,26539,16924,28,2200,2204,2176,115,139,141,140,554,3883,1014,1769,135,1576,19386,835],"class_list":["post-207268","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-orlando","tag-app-money-tech","tag-app-space","tag-artemis","tag-florida","tag-instagram-bn9","tag-instagram-n13","tag-jerry-hume","tag-news","tag-orlando","tag-orlando-headlines","tag-orlando-news","tag-science","tag-seminole","tag-seminole-county","tag-space","tag-tampa","tag-technology","tag-ucf-news","tag-vod"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207268","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=207268"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/207268\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/207269"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=207268"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=207268"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=207268"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}