Get the latest tech news

Walking on the Moon in Cologne: Europe's lunar life simulator

will train inside a unique simulator in Cologne and test equipment that will one day travel to the Moon / © AFP A large, ordinary-looking warehouse in the German city of Cologne is the closest you can get to walking on the Moon -- without leaving Earth. The facility known as LUNA, which was officially inaugurated on Wednesday, is the world's most faithful recreation of the lunar surface, according to the European Space Agency (ESA).

European astronauts will train inside the unique simulator and test equipment that will one day travel to the Moon -- including potentially on NASA's upcoming Artemis programme, which plans to send humans there on a mission in a few years. The engineers are still waiting on a delivery of 20 tonnes of regolith from Greenland, which will be used in the "dust laboratory," a hermetically sealed space inside LUNA for testing equipment. It is also hoped to help secure places for European astronauts on NASA's Artemis programme, which plans to return humans to the surface of the Moon later this decade.

Get the Android app