MKS-1

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Simulant Name: MKS-1
Availability: May Be Available
Fidelity: Standard
Developed By: Shimizu Corporation?
Available From: N/A
Publications: N/A

There is some uncertainty regarding this simulant. Materials from simulant workshops list MKS-1 as a low-Ti mare simulant developed by Marshall Space Flight Center, and reference ‘Carpenter 2005’. A PowerPoint presentation from a 2005 ISRU workshop by Paul Carpenter of Marshall compares several lunar simulants, and on a supplementary slide gives a bulk chemistry for ‘MKS-1’, reproduced here. This is the same chemistry listed for MKS-1 in a paper describing CAS-1, and the authors cite Kanamori et al. 1998. Kanamori et al. 1998 describes the FJS line of simulants, but makes no mention of an ‘MKS-1’. Other sources cite Kanamori et al. 2000, a conference paper titled ‘Study on the Utilization of Lunar Resources’. We could not track down a copy of this study.

It appears then that MKS-1 may have been another simulant produced by the Shimizu Corporation in Japan, but its nature (other than a bulk chemistry) and status are unknown. It seems unlikely this simulant has anything to do with Marshall.