Lunar dust and lunar simulant activation and monitoring |
| |
Authors: | William T WALLACE Lawrence A TAYLOR Yang LIU Bonnie L COOPER David S McKAY Bo CHEN Antony S JEEVARAJAN |
| |
Institution: | 1. Universities Space Research Association, Houston, Texas, USA;2. Habitability and Environmental Factors Division, NASA Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center 2101 NASA Pkwy., Mail Code SF, Houston, Texas 77058, USA;3. Planetary Geosciences Institute, Department of Earth & Planetary Sciences, University of Tennessee Knoxville, Tennessee 37996‐1410, USA;4. Oceaneering Space Systems, 16665 Space Center Blvd., Houston Texas 77058, USA;5. Astromaterials Research and Exploration Systems, NASA Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center, 2101 NASA Pkwy., Mail Code KA, Houston, Texas 77058, USA;6. Smalley Institute for Nanoscale Science and Technology, Rice University Houston, Texas 77005, USA |
| |
Abstract: | Abstract— NASA plans to resume human exploration of the Moon in the next decade. One of the pressing concerns is the effect that lunar dust (the fraction of the lunar regolith <20 μm in diameter) will have on systems, both human and mechanical, due to the fact that various problems were caused by dust during the Apollo missions. The loss of vacuum integrity in the lunar sample containers during the Apollo era ensured that the present lunar samples are not in the same condition as they were on the Moon; they have been passivated by oxygen and water vapor. To mitigate the harmful effects of lunar dust on humans, methods of “reactivating” the dust must be developed for experimentation, and, ideally, it should be possible to monitor the level of activity to determine methods of deactivating the dust in future lunar habitats. Here we present results demonstrating that simple grinding, as a simple analog to micrometeorite crushing, is apable of substantially activating lunar dust and lunar simulant, and it is possible to determine the level of chemical activity by monitoring the ability of the dust to produce hydroxyl radicals in aqueous solution. Comparisons between ground samples of lunar dust, lunar simulant, and quartz reveal that ground lunar dust is capable of producing over three times the amount of hydroxyl radicals as lunar simulant and an order of magnitude more than ground quartz. |
| |
Keywords: | |
|
|