A team at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida tests small- and medium-sized bucket drums July 16, 2021, in the Granular Mechanics and Regolith Operations Lab’s “big bin” during prototype development for the pilot excavator, a robotic mission designed for lunar operations. The bucket drum excavated lunar regolith simulant. The Swamp Works team leveled and compacted the simulant before excavation as well as measured penetration during the excavator testing. Robotics engineers Jason Schuler and Austin Langton worked inside the bin, teaming up with software engineer Kurt Leucht, who worked just outside of it.

Austin Langton, a researcher at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida, creates a fine spray of the regolith simulant BP-1, to perform testing with a Millimeter Wave Doppler Radar at the Granular Mechanics and Regolith Operations Lab on July 16, 2021. The testing occurred inside the "Big Bin," an enclosure at Swamp Works that holds 120 tons of regolith simulant. The testing at the Florida spaceport is part of a project to predict plume surface interaction effects on the Moon, with testing happening at Kennedy, and NASA's Marshal Space Flight Center and Glenn Research Center.

Photographer NASA/Kim Shiflett

Location Swamp Works

Date July 16, 2021

ER T GCD GMRO KSC Kennedy Space Center NASA RASSOR STMD Space Technology Mission Directorate Swamp Works bucket drum excavator pilot exacavator regolith testing

Pilot Excavator Testing