Desert Research and Technology Studies

NASA's Desert Research and Technology Studies (Desert RATS or D-RATS) is a group of teams which perform an annual series of field trials seeking to demonstrate and test candidate technologies and systems for manned exploration of the surface of the Moon, Mars, or other rocky bodies.

Desert RATS began in 1997, reviving Apollo-style lunar exploration training from decades earlier. The field season takes place for around two weeks each year, usually in September, in planned locations surrounding Flagstaff, Arizona. Some tests have also been conducted near Meteor Crater. These activities are designed to exercise prototype planetary surface hardware and representative mission scenario operations in relatively harsh climatic conditions where long distance, multi-day traversing activities are achievable.

The participants in Desert RATS vary from year to year. Past participants have included researchers from various NASA centers, including Johnson Space Center, Kennedy Space Center, Goddard Space Flight Center, Ames Research Center, Glenn Research Center, Langley Research Center, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Marshall Space Flight Center, as well as contractors Hamilton Sundstrand and ILC Dover, and researchers from numerous universities and institutes, including the Carnegie Institute, the Universities Space Research Association, and Virginia Commonwealth University.

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