Human versus Machine: Who builds better with MoonBricks?

From the 17th to the 18th of June 2025, the German Space Operations Center (GSOC) together with the European Astronaut Center (EAC) conducted another successful simulation campaign in the LUNA Analog Facility: A robotic arm installed on the regolith testbed built a small structure made of MoonBricks. The same activity was performed in parallel by an analog astronaut.

Both the construction time and the precision were analyzed and compared between the robotic arm and the analog astronaut. The Sun simulator provided by LUNA also made it possible to investigate how different illumination angles affect the outcome of the construction process. The different settings had a significant influence on the robot arm, since it uses an illumination sensitive camera to detect the MoonBricks to be moved. The test campaign also confirmed that it is possible for a robot arm to conduct such a construction task on a planetary body covered with regolith.

As done already in previous campaigns, one of the main goals was to investigate the remote cooperation between different LUNA operations’ centers. In fact, this campaign was used to verify the operational processes and communication links between the LUNA facility and GSOC, located in Oberpfaffenhofen, thus contributing to advance remote-based mission execution in LUNA.

Overall, the two-day campaign can be considered as a complete success: not only were all the goals achieved, but valuable insights and experience for future simulations were also gained.