Exolith Lab's workspace. Image: Exolith Lab
ABSTRACT breaks down mind-bending scientific research, future tech, new discoveries, and major breakthroughs.
Advertisement
Who’s using all that fake space dirt, and for what? In classrooms across the country, students plant seeds in kid-friendly Mars simulant supplied by companies, such as Austin-based startup The Martian Garden. Space agencies fill giant sandboxes with the stuff to test-drive interplanetary rovers. There are simulants that imitate the exotic surfaces of asteroids, comets, or the moons of Mars. And there is always the lure of the “unicorn simulant,” a term coined by Melissa Roth and Vince Roux, the co-owners and lead researchers of Off Planet Research, a simulant company based in Everett, Washington, to describe space dirt with customizable properties such as grain size, composition, temperature, and even magnetic strength.
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement
Advertisement