Since the 1960s, the United States and the Soviet Union have competed to be the first to reach the moon, interest in our natural satellite has wanedto unimaginable lows for decades and quite sad for many (myself included). This is of course a consequence of the fact that this space race was pursuing the right goal but for the wrong reasons and therefore reached the moon because it could cut down trees.

Fortunately, between the end of the last decade and what we have experienced in the current one, We are experiencing an important resurgence of interest in the Moonan interest that has already been translated into several programs to bring rovers and other devices to it, such as the ambitious plans of the Artemis program, whose first major milestone is for human beings to re-enter its surface, something that cannot be happening has been so for more than fifty years, despite the fact that the current level of human beings in all fields necessary to fulfill a mission of this type has improved significantly since then.

Now, although as I say, science and engineering have advanced a lot since then, a manned flight to the moon followed by extravehicular activity is able to take off from its surface and return home safely. This is not a routine mission. It takes a lot of work, a lot of talent, and a lot, a lot of preparation. And this is where a device developed by the European Space Agency (ESA) and the German Aerospace Center (DLR) comes into play and will be extremely useful for this last point.

Deployed in the German city of Cologne, LUNA is an installation that reproduces many conditions on the lunar surfaceand which will therefore serve as a training ground for astronauts, as well as for testing vehicles and other types of objects that are planned to be brought to our satellite. Of course, it is still not capable of reproducing the conditions of lunar gravity, about a sixth of that of our planet (1.62 m/s² compared to 9.81 m/s²), but it is planned to launch a discharge system. which will significantly improve the performance of realistic tests in this device.

Although the main reference in this sense, as I already mentioned, is the NASA Artemis program, both ESA and DLR designed and implemented LUNA for any type of entity, both public and privatewho have any interest in the Moon, and who therefore want to be able to run simulations that will allow them to verify whether what they are working on adapts better or worse to the actual conditions of the satellite.

More information