Off Planet Research

During last night's poster session at #LPSC2025, I presented the mechanical properties of Off Planet Research's four general lunar regolith simulants plus one of our simulants with agglutinates. It is always great to speak with researchers and engineers during the poster session about what they need in a simulant to do their work! Each use case has different testing needs so we love to work with folks to find the best fit, including customizing as needed. Test it like you fly it!

It is always great to be back at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference #LPSC2025 in Houston. This conference is a great way to hear about all the amazing science and research happening in our field and interface with the researchers making it happen! I will be presenting a poster on simulant properties Thursday evening at location #533. Come say hi! And you can't help but appreciate the horses of LPSC who help with traffic control on our way to the Food Truck Village. Their handlers say they love taking selfies. ?? To the Moon!

Thank you for Aerospace Futures Alliance - AFA and Kayla Coffee for organizing a great Aerospace on the Hill event yesterday. I felt much more confident coming back for my second year with a little more experience speaking with our state legislators to advocate for the space and aviation communities. And the advice from Tommy Gantz and my awesome fellow meeting members Matt Poischbeg Advanced Manufacturing Skills Center (AMSC), Dawson Frank, Rich White, Lynnette Muenzberg, and Jennifer Ziegler certainly made the day even smoother! Washington state's aviation heritage creates a unique and invaluable knowledge base here that the greatly benefits the local space industry. Local suppliers and vendors are familiar with the precision machining requirements, standards, support hardware, and specialty materials that are necessary for building our robust space infrastructure. Additionally, by diversifying the larger aerospace industry, there can be more economic resiliency when either aviation or space experience a slowdown. Washington state is helping support our return to the Moon!

Relax and enjoy the Interlune version of ASMR. Check out the newest additions to our simulated Moon dirt collection, which we use to test our technology and hardware that will extract helium-3 from the real stuff on the Moon. Real lunar soil, or “regolith,” brought back from the Apollo missions is too precious to use in testing. So, specialized companies create simulants that mimic the Moon’s diverse soils. Each test brings Interlune closer to being the first company to commercialize natural resources from space. Thanks to Nina Hooper, who is not afraid to get her hands dirty! ??

I was thrilled to attend the International Symposium on Artificial Intelligence, Robotics and Automation in Space #iSAIRAS last week in Brisbane hosted by CSIRO. It was exciting to present an update on Off Planet Research's simulants with increased magnetic response and how iron in lunar regolith affects various technologies, including?beneficiation for #ISRU operations, dust mitigation and removal, filtration systems, and electromagnetic effects on wireless device performance. In addition to dozens of technical presentations, we also got to hear agency updates from CSA, DLR, ESA, JAXA, NASA, ASA, JPL and CSIRO with a highlight being the presentation by Katherine Bennell-Pegg, who is the first person qualified as an astronaut under the Australian flag. Not only did CSIRO- Australia's national science agency- put together a great conference, the team rallied on Day 4 in the rain to take us all on an incredible tour of their facilities. Throw in seeing what geopolymers from the tailings (remnants) of regolith extraction might look like and 103 (!) koalas from a side trip to the Koala Sanctuary, and it was a memorable trip! Going to a new conference with few connections is always a little stressful for a closet introvert. Everyone was so kind and helpful. Shoutout to all the amazing students in attendance who presented on their work with the Australian Rover Challenge or other areas of research. With the next generation enthusiastic to go to the #Moon, Australia's space future is very bright, and their unique expertise with large-scale mining is an asset to the industry.

Glad our simulants could help you reach new (gravity-defying) heights!