If the political, technological and budgetary stars align for NASA and its partners in the coming years, the moon could become a place with the unfolding of the century. Astronauts will again explore the Earth’s celestial side of the earth, possibly making possible future mining attempts hidden in shields shy from sunlight to process water, oxygen and rocket propellant. Humans that “settle” on the moon could be a possibility for the future.
U.S. The next chapter of the human exploration of the moon, the Artemis Project, will send a crew there for the period in view of Apollo’s legacy. Between 1969 and the end of 1972, a dozen astronauts kicked the moon’s top dirt, powdery regolith. But there’s a flashback message worth noting by Apollo Moonwalk: that space is a dusty Disneyland.
During their landing, the astronaut’s visibility was affected by dust blowing into the thin lunar atmosphere. Once the crew got out and were on the moon, the dust had a detrimental effect on their spacesuits, helmets, equipment and supplies. Members of the Apollo mission could not escape tracking lunar material inside their lunar landers. After dinging off their helmets and gloves, moonshine curses can experience the abrasive nature of the dust, even a “Apollo scent” – a distinctive, fragrant odor.
As explained by the Apollo 17 lunar landing crew:
“I think dust is our biggest obstacle in the trivial operation on the moon. I think we can overcome physical or mechanical problems other than dust, ”said Mission Commander Eugene Karna. “One of the most distorted, forbidden aspects of exploring the lunar surface is that whatever type of material it is, be it skin, suit material, metal, whatever it is and its action like prohibited friction, it adheres to dust and everything. It happens on everything, ”said Harrison Smith, a lunar module pilot and geologist.
Agency, Industry Consortium
Study groups and technologists are evaluating ways to reduce the negative impact of lunar dust on astronauts, their devices and surface functioning.
Joel Levine, a research professor of applied science at Williamburg and Mary’s College in Virginia, was the convener and chairman of NASA’s workshop on lunar dust and its impact on financial research. The message of that workshop, held in February, was clear. “Before the first human landing of Artemis on the moon, we should better understand the distribution of micro-sizes, structure, chemical composition, potential toxicity, magnetic and electrical properties, and the dynamics and distribution of lunar dust.”
Findings of the workshop 24 Sept. The dust problem is “an agency and industry concern that affects most mission subsystems and must be addressed,” said NASA’s Engineering and Safety Center Technical Assessment Report. The report also said that in order to detect dust characteristics, which would affect hardware design, and provide toxicology data to protect crew health, it is crucial to measure and conduct experiments on the lunar surface by pioneering landers. “
Protecting lunar gear
Gerald Sanders, an expert in in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) for NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, said future lunar machinery would be challenged. Unlike other equipment and devices that operate on the moon, ISRU systems and hardware need to be in constant and lunar regulation and in direct contact with dust for a very long time. That said, it is very important to develop techniques and techniques to resist friction, protect optical coatings, as well as protect rotating mechanisms. Finally, easily replaceable components will be important in moon-located gear.
“While the Apollo missions and samples returning to Earth have provided a wealth of information, the VIPR rover will not enter the region of permanent shadow until we have a true understanding of what regulation is for designing future ice mining equipment. ”Sanders said. NASA’s Volatiles Investigation Polar Exploration Rover or VIPER is a mobile robot that will go to the moon’s south pole, possibly under NASA’s commercial lunar payload services program in early December 2022.
Philip Metzger, a planetary physicist from the Faculty of Planetary Science at the University of Central Florida, has focused his research on dust transport and its effects as a spacecraft lands on the moon.
“The lunar lander engine exhaust blows rocks at high speeds of dust, clay, gravel and ocks and will damage surrounding hardware such as lunar outposts, mining operations or historic landmarks unless the eject is properly reduced,” Metzger said.
Metzger added that decades of research have developed a consistent picture of the physics of rocket exhausts flying to the lunar surface, “but there are significant distances.” “None of the currently available modeling methods can fully predict impact. However, the basics are well understood to begin the design of countermeasures. “
Metzger is the chief investigator for the EJECTA sheet tracking, opacity and regolith maturity (STORM) instrument, which is ready to fly over the Masten space systems Zodiac Vertical Takeoff and Vertical Landing System. The next flight to Mojave, California will make findings about the density and size of the churned particles during a terrestrial simulation of a lunar landing.
Integrated Dust Mission Strategy
NASA wants to put the first woman and the next man on the moon’s south pole in 2024. The site is being advocated as a future base camp due to possible access to ice and other mineral resources. However, the true physical properties of lunar dust and regolith in the polar regions are still unknown.
George Nez of the Planetary Exploration Group at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, said many questions need to be addressed. “We can estimate and extralate based on the data we already have, but we won’t really know until it lands in the fields.”
“As we learned from the Apollo mission, lunar dust can cause a variety of issues, including endangering the astronaut’s health, sticking to all kinds of surfaces, such as spacesuits, visors and windows, solar panels and radiators.” Moon dust also degrades seals, fabrics and mechanisms. Dealing with dust requires an “integrated dust removal strategy”, such as using slow, systematic movements and giving enough time for dust cleaning protocols, as well as removing electrodynamic dust shield material to keep a spacious residence or spacesuit outside a lunar rover. For.
NICE said NASA’s lunar surface innovation initiative is accelerating the development of many dust removal technologies that are important for enabling human missions to the lunar surface.
Moon Simulators
The reactive nature of lunar dust for humans is another area marked by Carl Hibbits of the APL, a key contributor to the ISRU Focus Group of the Lunar Surface Innovation Consortium. Moon dust has been considered troublesome in this area since the Apollo era. These particles are chemically highly reactive, he said, thus potential health concerns (although various passivation techniques are being explored to make them less reactive).
“We tried to study the reactivity of the lunar lands in the lab, but all the studies I know were on samples altered by the Earth’s atmosphere,” Hibbits said. A new study on carefully prepared lunar lands is expected to provide some new insights. In addition, as far as “simulants” go – the material created on Earth to mimic the properties of the lunar regolith – one has to choose what properties one needs to imitate. “It is not possible to make a literal ton or maybe a small amount of lunar clay. The facilities are just learning how to make real guelinites, ”he added, and yet to be reproduced is the nanoface metallic iron that resides in the lunar law.
“We’re getting better at the near-stage of shape and size distribution work, but reactivity can only be replicated by production in a vacuum chamber and will always be limited to small quantities,” Hibbits said. SpaceNews.
So far, human contact with small, very sharp, glassy moon dust particles occurred only briefly during the Apollo mission, said Peter Sime, an emergency medicine specialist at Newport News, Virginia. But, in returning to the moon and establishing a long-term presence, lunar dust, sufficiently, presents a “toxic threat” to human health.
The respiratory system is particularly sensitive, but can also affect the eyes, skin and possibly the gastrointestinal tract and other organs, Sime said. He advised that primary prevention of human exposure to lunar dust should be our first goal.
He added that NASA’s new Exploration Extravascular Mobility Unit (XEMU) spacesuit will help keep dust at bay. It has a group of dust-tolerant characteristics, to prevent inhalation or contamination of the claim life support system. However, keeping dwellings dust-free and using an effective atmospheric purification system by reducing invasions will be a major challenge. “Monitoring the dust inside the lunar habitat will be crucial, as this is the place where astronauts are most likely to come into contact. Because of this, the amount, size and potential toxicity of hab dust is paramount, “he said.
Space News Contributor Leonard David Author of “Moon Rush: The New Space Race” published by National Geographic in May 2019.
This article originally appeared in the December 14, 2020 issue of Space News Magazine.
