LUNAR explorers had better be handy with a vacuum cleaner. A new 鈥渓unar dust buster鈥� may be an essential tool for future missions, allowing astronauts to clean up following grubby moonwalks and prevent the dirt penetrating the moon base.
Moon dust is much more of a menace than the terrestrial variety, due to the structure of the particles. They are covered in tiny spikes that hook into surfaces. This means the dust sticks so tightly to surfaces that brushing alone cannot shift it. 鈥淲e are talking about abrasive Velcro,鈥� says of the Catholic University of America, Washington DC, who works at NASA鈥檚 Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. These spikes also collect electrical charge, which holds them in place on a surface. The dust is so abrasive it can damage machinery, and there are also concerns that it could be dangerous if inhaled.
鈥淭he dust is so abrasive it can damage machinery, and inhaling it could also be dangerous鈥�
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To solve the problem, Clark鈥檚 team is working on SPARCLE, a 鈥渓unar dust buster鈥� that astronauts could utilise in the airlock to a moon base. The device consists of a positively charged metallic nozzle fitted to an electron gun, similar to those used in electron microscopes, which fires a focused beam of electrons from a hot filament.
Following a moonwalk, astronauts would scan the beam across the surface of their dirty equipment, showering it with electrons until all the dust particles and the surface become negatively charged and start to repel one another. This would loosen the particles鈥� grip, allowing them to fly to the positively charged nozzlewhere they are captured.
In tests, the dust buster picked up a 2-millimetre-high pile of crushed volcanic rock similar to lunar dust. The team will present its latest results at the in Huntsville, Alabama, next month.
, who investigates lunar dust at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, points out that magnetic attraction might be more effective at removing bigger dust particles. He suggests using a combination of the two techniques.
