"It has the landscape; it looks like the Moon. And it has the scale of features astronauts will both be observing and exploring," NASA's Cindy Evans said.

With NASA's crewed mission to the moon only a year away, first results from radiation experiments onboard Artemis 1 suggest short trips are within human limits, but longer missions or travel to Mars may be challenging.

Black and gray sediment stretches as far as the eye can see. Boulders sit on top of ground devoid of vegetation. Humans appear almost miniature in scale against a swath of shadowy mountains. At first glance,