Hindsight is not quite 20/20 for NASA’s historic Apollo missions. For instance, the Apollo 12 lander successfully touched down on the moon at exactly 6:35:25 UTC on November 19, 1969. What happened to the lunar environment as astronauts touched down, however, wasn’t recorded—and exact details on the reactions between nearby rocks, debris, and lunar regolith to lander engines’ supersonic bursts of gas aren’t documented. And physically replicating Apollo 12’s historic moment on Earth isn’t possible, given stark differences in lunar gravity and geology, not to mention the moon’s complete lack of atmosphere.
This is particularly a problem for NASA as it continues to plan for astronauts’ potential 2025 return to Earth’s satellite during the Artemis program. The landing craft delivering humans onto the lunar surface will be much more powerful than its Apollo predecessors, so planning for the literal and figurative impact is an absolute necessity. To do so, NASA researchers at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, are relying on the agency’s Pleiades supercomputer to help simulate previous lunar…
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