Who Needs a Social Life When You Can Mine the Moon

Dust, soil broken rock and other related materials that blanket planetary surfaces—known as regolith—have great potential to contribute to space observation research, but the physical properties of lunar regolith are unique and very difficult to excavate from a technical perspective. A group of students at the Missouri University of Science and Technology, dubbed the Lunar Miners, decided to step up to the plate—that is, by entering the 2008 NASA Regolith Excavation Challenge.