What steps can be taken to reduce the risks of lunar dust for future astronauts? This is what upcoming research funded by the NASA Exoplanet Science Institute hopes to address as a team of researchers from the University of Central Florida (UCF) will investigate methods and strategies for protecting astronauts and equipment from lunar dust. This study has the potential to help astronauts, engineers, scientists, and mission planners develop strategies for reducing health and safety risks posed by lunar dust.
For the research, the team is developing a novel nanocoating that could be used to reduce the amount of lunar dust that sticks to astronaut suits and lunar equipment. They plan to use a combination of modeling and laboratory experiments to test the nanocoating, with the latter being performed under lunar conditions with a vacuum chamber and simulated lunar regolith. In the end, the researchers aspire to learn which surfaces will be most influenced by lunar dust and how nanocoating reduces this influence, along with what changes need to be made to those surfaces to improve the nanocoating application and use.
“We’ve got particle-to-particle and particle to surface interactions,” said Dr. Tarek Elgohary, who is an associate professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at UCF and will be responsible for creating models for the team. “We want to simulate those on the computers and then match what we know from the experiments, such as the physical properties, with what we get from the simulation. So essentially, we’re trying to close the loop between simulations and experiments to better understand the physical phenomenon.”
This study comes as NASA’s Artemis program is preparing to send astronauts back to the Moon for the first time since 1972, which was Apollo 17. This was one of the six Apollo landing missions where the two-man crews had first-hand experience with lunar dust, resulting in sticking to their suits and tracking it into the lunar lander where the astronauts suffered from sneezing and coughing.
How will this new nanocoating help reduce the risks of lunar dust in the coming years and decades? Only time will tell, and this is why we science!
As always, keep doing science & keep looking up!
Sources: EurekAlert!, University of Central Florida
Featured Image Credit: University of Central Florida, Antoine Hart
