Abstract: In order to provide technical assistance to the safe landing of space landers, the bearing capacity of lunar soil is studied in this paper. The lunar soil is too extremely precious to be used in in-situ tests. Therefore, TJ-1 lunar soil simulant which was developed by the authors recently was selected as the substitutive material. Firstly, about 255 tons of TJ-1 lunar soil simulant was used to generate an experimental base. Its dimensions were 13 m×12 m×1.2 m. After that , 6 cone penetration tests (CPT) measuring points and 2 plate load tests (PLT) measuring points were uniformly arranged within the test area. Then, the cone resistance was recorded in the process of penetration test and the settlement was recorded in the process of plate load test. Finally, the results of these two experiments were discussed based on Terzaghi classical theory of bearing capacity and 12 empirical formulas. The results show that the bearing capacity calculated from semi-empirical Terzaghi formula was evidently smaller than the predicted value. However, one empirical formula ( ) was found to be able to predict the bearing capacity of lunar soil from the results of cone penetration tests. It is shown that the calculated results can match the results of plate loading tests very well .

Key words: space lander, cone penetration tests, lunar soil, TJ-1 lunar soil simulant, bearing capacity