A new venue for instrument and operations testing and campaign simulations: The ESA/DLR LUNA analogue facility

Kurzfassung

DLR and ESA are currently jointly building the Moon analogue facility LUNA at the campus in Cologne, Germany. LUNA is scheduled to start operations before the end of this year and will serve as a large-scale testbed facility to simulate complex astronautical and robotic lunar operations under realistic conditions in a controlled, standardized environment. As a test and verification centre, LUNA will support the development, demonstration, and validation of future lunar instrumentation and exploration technologies. LUNA consists of a main hall with an area of 700m² filled with EAC-1 Mare basalt regolith simulant, and additional labs, workshops and modules. The direct vicinity to ESA’s European Astronaut Center (EAC) and DLR’s Microgravity User Support Center (MUSC) allows for easy integration with astronaut training and the operational infrastructure for ISS and Gateway. In this contribution, we give an overview of LUNA for potential future users, with a special focus on elements relevant to the testing of instruments and operations concepts.