Want to experience Moon, move to Montana. 

That headline caught my eye a while back. It was posted by the website Telengana Today.

NASA explains, a unique location on Earth – Stillwater Complex in Montana- is rocky and dusty like the Moon and contains a special type of rock, anorthosite, which is common in the Moon’s oldest crust. It is what helps give the Moon its iconic, high-contrast appearance.

 

Since we like to talk about all things Montana, I thought- why not catch up with someone from NASA to talk about this on the radio?

Earlier this week we caught up with Sarah Deitrick of NASA’s Johnson Space Center and talked more about how important the Stillwater Complex in the Beartooth Mountains of Montana is to NASA.

Dietrick tells us that we can use the Stillwater Complex to simulate the depth on the moon, and also for important testing on the spacesuits worn by NASA astronauts:

We don't want to go to the moon unprepared. We need practice. We need to figure out what we're doing before we go there so we don't mess up. So the materials from the Stillwater Complex can help us do that.

Especially for the new Artemis program coming up, which is NASA's new mission to send humans back to the moon in 2024. We are going to the south pole of the moon, and the south pole is composed of the lunar highlands which is this anorthosite material- so this is why the Stillwater Complex is so important especially right now.

Click below for audio: