“We basically take minerals, as pure as we can get, … we mix them together, a bit of this and a pinch of that, and follow the recipe,” said Daniel Britt, a UCF professor of physics and planetary science who leads the school’s Exolith lab. “Oddly enough, if you follow the recipe, it ends up looking very much like the extraterrestrial stuff. The right color, the right texture, the right properties.”