Abstract Compared to other technical methods, drilling and coring by only using the compound motions of rotation and penetration can sample subsurface lunar soils relatively efficiently. Considering that drill tool's power consumption and soils' coring morphology are both determined by external operating parameters and physical properties of in-situ soils, the influence by drilling parameters on a certain formation should be investigated firstly. To remove the coupling effect by lunar soils' physical properties, one type of homogeneous lunar soil simulant along the longitudinal direction is urgently necessary for verification experiments. Herein, a dynamic-compacting based lunar soil simulant preparation method is proposed to tamp the raw soil material into a relatively dense and uniform state. A group of optimized lunar soil preparation parameters has been acquired by analyzing the dynamic interaction process. Experiments under a high speed camera's online monitoring indicated that under over 12 cycles of tamping the raw soil can be compacted into a homogeneous state along about 200 mm depth, which is consistent with the analytical results. The longitudinal density of the compacted soil simulant is also close to the value of lunar soil. Therefore, further orthogonal sampling experiments will be conducted in this lunar regolith simulant.

Highlights • A dynamic-compacting based soil simulant preparation method is proposed. • Rebound height is calculated and verified by employing a high speed camera. • Reasonable tamping times are acquired based on tamping energy per volume. • Raw soil is compacted into relatively homogeneous in optimized tamping times.