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Future lunar missions are threatened by lunar soil. It seems harmless, but moon dust can damage scientific equipment and harm human health: it looks like a sticky powder made from glass fragments.
Neil Armstrong arrived for the first time on the moon 50 years ago, and his lunar footprints will be there for millions of years, according to NASA. There is no wind to sweep the footprints. On their return to Earth, Apollo mission astronauts said that moon dust was sticky, abrasive and stinking.
The next astronauts who will walk on the Moon will face many obstacles: the dangers of traveling in space, exposure to high levels of radiation, lack of air, gravity, food and water. But the dust is surprisingly among the problems to solve for a successful visit to the moon.
Strange Properties of Moon Dust
According to Britannica, the lunar surface is covered with regolith, a layer of powder dust and broken rocks. The soil of the Earth is a mixture of minerals, organic matter, air and water. It is a beautiful layer of land where plants and animals flourish. The moon's soil, on the other hand, consists mainly of silicate minerals.
Tights
According to Popular Mechanics, the moon's lack of atmosphere makes it vulnerable to the solar wind. Unlike the breeze we feel at home – after all, there is no air on the moon – the solar wind is a stream of charged particles from the upper layers of the sun. When these ions reach the moon, they charge the ground electrostatically. Just like when clothes or hair have a static grip on the Earth, the lunar floor attaches to space suits.
Abrasive
The moon is frequently hit by meteorites, and without any atmosphere to mitigate the shock, their impact is more dramatic than here on Earth. Discover Magazine explains that billions of years of meteorite activity have propelled much sawtooth dust. The grains of lunar dust are as small as the finest grains of sand, with an average diameter of only 0.07 millimeters. But the moon dust grains stay hard for a very long time due to lack of erosion, so the dust is abrasive.
Dirty problems on the moon
Lunar soil poses a host of problems for astronauts and their equipment. This can damage scientific machines and instruments. Discover Magazine points out that the first instrument placed on the Moon, an Apollo 11 seismometer mission, quickly failed because the dust made it overheat. More recently, the Chinese robot Yutu died in 2014, and moon dust was probably the cause of the vehicle failure.
According to Wired, the "dozen dust" Apollo astronauts attempted to get rid of the annoying moon dust to keep the moon module clean. After the moon had walked, they stomped on their boots, removed the dust with bristle brushes and tried to remove them with a vacuum cleaner. They wrapped garbage bags around their legs to try to contain the dust. During the Apollo 12 mission, astronaut Pete Conrad even stripped naked and stuffed his suit into a dust bag.
On the moon, dust is much more than a chore of housekeeping. This is a dangerous feature of the landscape. During our brief visits to the Apollo era, he scratched the astronauts' sights and weakened the seals of their compression suit.
A danger to the health of astronauts
The astronauts who went to the moon said that it smelled of gunpowder or some kind of combustion. In addition to damaging their suits, the dust hurt their eyes and throat, according to The New York Times. The lunar soil could be toxic to humans. Harrison Schmitt of Apollo 17 – the last person to set foot on the moon – described symptoms similar to those of hay fever after walking in the moon. Although it was only a slight allergic reaction, it remained there for only 22 hours. NASA is now preparing for much longer tours, which would expose astronauts and their equipment to abrasive dust much longer.
A 2018 study suggests that prolonged exposure to lunar dust could expose astronauts to developing serious illnesses. The experience published in GeoHealth by Stony Brook University exposed human lung cells and mouse brain cells to simulated lunar soil. They found that during inhalation, the dust was damaging the cells at the DNA level. The researchers warned that prolonged exposure to lunar dust could alter the airways and lungs, lead to bronchitis, inflammation of the lungs and increased risk of cancer.
Solutions for dealing with dust
The success of future lunar missions will depend in part on the search for solutions to the lunar soil problem. According to Discover Magazine, researchers have proposed a special vacuum cleaner using magnets to capture dust particles.
There are not many solutions yet, but Popular Science reports that nine different institutions are currently studying lunar rock samples to learn more about the geology and chemistry of the moon. The samples are sealed and stored for 50 years. They are now available for analysis with the latest technologies. Observations made on these samples will help guide future plans to visit the moon.
Interested in all things on the moon and beyond? We are too. Take a look at our vacancies and consider joining our team: Careers.NorthropGrumman.com.
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