Will dust prevent us from living on the moon?

Even before Neil Armstrong set foot Tranquility, scientists and engineers were concerned about the dangers of lunar dust. While rockets like the Saturn V were tested for the first voyages to the moon, there was a very real concern that the lunar dust was an insurmountable barrier to lunar exploration.

The problem was that no one had a clear idea of ​​what the moon's surface was like. Perhaps it was as firm as the large lava flats of Hawaii or Iceland. Or maybe the so-called seas and craters were filled with fine dust hundreds of meters deep in which any spaceship would disappear like a belt weight dropped into the ocean.

But what the astronauts found unexpected and equally disturbing. Instead of seas of fluid-like dust, they discovered that billions of years of micrometeorite impacts had covered the lunar surface with a thin layer of silicate dust that had a number of of disturbing qualities. On the one hand, it was as dry as possible, and the bombardment by solar and cosmic radiation had left the particles with a static electric charge. This made the dust stuck to the space suits of astronauts in the form of a greyish black powder that was almost impossible to move and ended up contaminating both the inside of the lunar module and the orbiting control module when they came back, smelling like burnt powder.

Worse, drought and radiation made the dust chemically active and the particles were so abrasive that they wreaked havoc on scuba, sample containers and other equipment. As for the astronauts, all 12 moon walkers fell with "lunar hay fever" with symptoms like sneezing and nasal congestion that took days to calm down after returning to Earth.

Now an international team of a dozen scientists will examine the long-term effects of exposure to moon dust. There are already indications that this could cause serious diseases, such as cancer, but the exact dangers posed by dust and its implications remain largely unknown.

Silicate dust is already a danger on Earth, especially for miners or people exposed to dust storms. or volcanic eruptions, which can cause a disease called silicosis. But the moon dust is different. The Earth's very active environment uses silicate particles, so they become rounded, but the moon dust has sharp, jagged edges that make it so abrasive that it's worn out at the boots special exteriors worn by lunar walkers. One can only imagine what it would do to lung tissue at this stage.

Another problem is that since gravity on the moon is only one-sixth of the Earth, it means that any nano-sized dust inside a spaceship or habitat remain in suspended in the air for months, producing longer and deeper lung exposure.