The Big Island's stark volcanic landscape once served as a training ground for lunar astronauts, and now it's being proposed as a resource for America's next likely space conquest: Mars.

A local company is seeking state permission to quarry an area off Saddle Road between Mauna Loa and Mauna Kea so it can ship purified volcanic ash to NASA and private contractors for use in experiments and for educational purposes.

When filtered, the ash at the state-owned Pu'u Nene site in North Hilo is identical to Martian dust, said Ron Terry of Geometrician Associates in Kea'au, who prepared a draft environmental assessment for the project.

"You can run a Mars Rover over it to see how it behaves and what kind of traction it gets, how the dust collects, how it obscures the optics, and how it interferes with the mechanics. It provides a pretty good simulation," Terry said.

The material also is used to give schoolchildren an idea of what it would be like to explore the Red Planet.

Looking ahead to the possible colonization of Mars, Terry said other experiments could be done on the Big Island material to determine what it would take to make the ash suitable for growing crops.

Although the volcanic material is available elsewhere, Terry said the Pu'u Nene site is an ideal location for digging it up it because it is near roads, has a long history of quarrying, and is close to a military reservation with no sensitive resources nearby.

The company, Geohazards Consultants International, is headed by retired Hawaiian Volcano Observatory scientist Jack Lockwood. It's seeking a state conservation district use permit to temporarily remove no more than 3,520 square yards of surface soil to a depth of about a foot, and excavation of the underlying ash to a depth of 2 to 3 feet. All the excavation would be done by hand.

The material would be dried and then passed through a series of stainless-steel sieves on vibrating tables, Terry said. The final product would consist of up to 125 tons of refined and purified ash, which would be shipped to Wisconsin. The coarser-grained ash that was screened out and the topsoil that was removed would be returned to fill the excavated area, and would eventually be revegetated, according to the draft assessment.

Although small loaders and pickup trucks would be used on the road below the cinder cone, the report said no heavy equipment would be used on the pu'u's slopes. The work area where the material will be dried, filtered and prepared for transport already has been severely disturbed by previous quarrying activities, according to Terry.

His report said that Pu'u Nene has no archaeological or cultural sites, and that the area is barely visible from any public viewpoint.

Reach Christie Wilson at cwilson@honoluluadvertiser.com.