Printed enclosure shell
Acrylic top, bottom, and side panels bonded into printed corner structures for a clean, rigid enclosure.
Lunar gravity build
Apollo 17 carried a lunar gravimeter. It failed.
Echo Shear Labs
After six Moon missions, we still do not have a clean direct gravity measurement off Earth.
We’re building the gravity experiment they should have built.
The lunar gravimeter drifted, could not be properly zeroed, and never delivered the clean off-Earth gravity result people expected.
That leaves a gap no one should be comfortable with: humanity has stood on the Moon, but has never completed a proper direct gravity experiment there.
Echo Shear Labs is building a torsion beam balance to measure the mutual attraction between two masses directly on lunar regolith.
Torsion Balance
Laser Optics
Vacuum Testing
Lunar Deployment Concept
30-second explainer
What is a torsion balance?
Simple idea. Precision hardware.
A torsion balance suspends a light beam on an extremely fine fibre. When one mass pulls on another, the beam twists by a tiny angle. That twist is small, but with the right optics it becomes measurable.
1
Hang the beam
A narrow beam carries two test masses and hangs from a very fine suspension fibre that resists twisting.
2
Let gravity tug sideways
A nearby source mass pulls slightly harder on one side than the other, producing a tiny torque on the beam.
3
Read the twist with light
A laser and optical readout turn that almost invisible rotation into a measurable signal.
The entire measurement lives in that tiny twist. The job of the rest of the system is to make the twist stable, visible, and clean enough to trust.
Current progress
The hardware is getting real.
From concept to hardware
These are the current build visuals: enclosure, torsion beam, optics integration, and the vacuum test configuration. Each one turns the project from an argument into hardware. For more information, contact contact@echoshearlabs.com.
Torsion beam assembly
The core balance geometry: suspended beam, precision support, and paired masses ready for measurement work.
Sensor and optics mock-up
Precision laser optics tied into the torsion balance so tiny motion can actually be seen and recorded.
Vacuum-ready concept pass
The vacuum configuration: torsion balance inside chamber, optics outside, measurement path locked through the viewport.
Want more detail, media, collaboration info, or technical discussion? Contact contact@echoshearlabs.com.
Support the build
We’re live on GoFundMe and building in public. Every contribution goes straight into the next piece of hardware.