Digital Lunar Exploration Sites (DLES) Terrain Crafting

Humans will soon be returning to the surface of the Moon with NASA's Artemis program. The Artemis program is an international collaboration that will consist of a complex series of space systems and missions to explore the lunar surface and pave the way for the future exploration of Mars. NASA and its partners rely heavily on simulation for lighting and navigation studies as well as training astronauts, flight controllers, and mission support staff. The NASA Exploration Systems Simulations (NExSyS) team, which resides in the Simulation and Graphics Branch (ER7) within the Engineering Directorate at NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC), has built up many simulation products to support this effort. One of these is Digital Lunar Exploration Sites (DLES), which is a collection of products used to simulate and render the lunar surface in a digital environment. An overview of these products was discussed and presented at the 2022 IEEE Aerospace Conference in Big Sky, MT with a paper titled Digital Lunar Exploration Sites, which serves as a foundation for the current work. Here, we expand on the information provided in that publication, outlining further details regarding the terrain crafting process and the toolsets used to complete this task.