HOW TO MAKE THE MOON ON EARTH

The expense and prestige involved in sending landers and rovers to the Moon means you can’t afford for them not to work when they get there. But the lunar landscape is like nothing here on Earth. So how, and where, do you test equipment that’s bound for the Moon?

- DR EZZY PEARSON

Nighttime in the Mojave Desert. The stars of the Milky Way turn slowly above a landscape so dark you can barely make it out. Suddenly, spotlights switch on. They're angled low to the horizon and off to one side, but spill light across a pale grey, undulating terrain that's pockmarked by craters. You know you're standing among the sands of California, but lit like this, it looks like you're on the Moon.

This 'Moon in the Mojave' is the work of spaceflight company Astrobotic, which has been building the Lunar Surface Proving Ground (LSPG). The 100m² (approx 1,000ft²) site has been made to look exactly like the lunar south pole. The region was ignored by early Moon explorers, but has witnessed a surge in interest over the last decade after signs of water ice were found in the permanently shadowed recesses of deep craters. Such water could be an invaluable resource both for science and future explorers.

Astrobotic aims to head to the region with its Peregrine and Griffin landers, due to launch this December and then November 2024 respectively. They're just two of a great many missions supporting NASA's Artemis programme to return humans, including the first woman and person of colour, to the lunar surface by the end of the decade. But before either Peregrine or Griffin can even think of leaving the ground, they have to be fully tested.

MIMICKING THE MOON