NASA Supercomputers

NASA

Rocket Exhaust on the Moon: NASA Supercomputers Reveal Surface Effects

Play Video Researchers at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama produced a simulation of the Apollo 12 lander engine plumes interacting with the lunar surface. This animation depicts the last half-minute of descent before engine cut-off, showing the predicted forces exerted by plumes on a flat computational surface. Known as shear stress, this is the amount of lateral,…