Labrador crater studied as lunar training ground

A team of three scientists from Memorial University will spend more than two weeks in a remote region in northern Labrador studying a crater millions of years old, in hopes of establishing a new training site for astronauts.

The research group is heading to Kamestasin Lake, about 150 kilometres west of Natuashish, where a meteorite slammed into the rocky terrain millions of years ago. The rocks in the region are anorthosites, the same type of rock found on the moon, and the similarities have excited the scientific researchers.

Paul Sylvester, from Memorial's department of Earth sciences, is leading the mission.

"Ultimately I see that Kamestastin Lake could be a place where astronauts might come and train to better acclimate themselves for what they're facing when they go to the moon," Sylvester told CBC News. "This crater is unique in the whole world. It's more like a lunar crater than anywhere else on the Earth."

While on the trip, divers will study the bottom of the lake, collecting rock samples and videotaping the underwater terrain.

The project is funded in part by the Canadian Space Agency. Sylvester said the agency is interested in the crater because of its remote location, colder temperature and barren surrounding terrain, making it an ideal place to test lunar robots.

"When you're dealing with the robots on the moon you can't reach out and touch them when something goes wrong, but here you could actually see what was going right and wrong with a robotic device and fix it," he said.

The researchers working in Labrador hope their findings will help convince NASA as well as the European Space Agency the region would be a good training ground for lunar missions.