NASA experiment sheds light on highly charged moon dust

Researchers are finding out knowledge from a latest suborbital flight check to raised perceive lunar regolith, or moon dust, and its probably damaging results as NASA prepares to ship astronauts again to the lunar floor below the Artemis marketing campaign. The experiment, developed collectively by NASA and the College of Central Florida, sheds gentle on how these abrasive dust grains work together with astronauts, their spacesuits, and different tools on the moon.

The Electrostatic Regolith Interplay Experiment (ERIE) was certainly one of 14 NASA-supported payloads launched on Dec. 19 aboard Blue Origin’s New Shepard uncrewed rocket from Launch Website One in West Texas. In the course of the flight test, ERIE collected knowledge to assist researchers on the company’s Kennedy Area Heart in Florida research tribocharging, or friction-induced prices, in microgravity.

The moon is very charged by phenomena resembling solar wind and ultraviolet gentle from the sun. Below these situations, regolith grains are drawn to lunar explorers and their tools—consider it as much like the static created by rubbing a balloon on an individual’s head. Sufficient regolith could cause devices to overheat or not perform as supposed.

“For instance, for those who get dust on an astronaut swimsuit and produce it again into the habitat, that dust might unstick and fly across the cabin,” stated Krystal Acosta, a researcher for NASA’s triboelectric sensor board element contained in the ERIE payload. “One of many main issues is that there is no approach to electrically floor something on the moon. So even a lander, rover, or actually any object on the moon could have polarity to it. There is no good resolution to the dust charging downside proper now.”

A Kennedy crew designed and constructed the triboelectric sensor board contained in the ERIE payload, which reached an altitude of 351,248 toes aboard New Shepard. Within the microgravity phase of this flight, dust grains simulating regolith particles brushed up towards eight insulators inside ERIE, making a tribocharge. The electrometer measured the adverse and constructive cost of the simulated regolith because it traveled by means of an electrical discipline utilized throughout microgravity.

“We wish to know what causes the dust to cost, the way it strikes round, and the place it finally settles. The dust has tough edges that may scratch surfaces and block thermal radiators,” stated Jay Phillips, lead of Electrostatics Environments and Spacecraft Charging at NASA Kennedy.

The ERIE payload spent roughly three minutes in microgravity in the course of the New Shepard capsule’s suborbital flight, which lasted about 10 minutes earlier than touchdown safely again on Earth within the Texas desert. A digicam recorded the interactions, and Philips and his crew are reviewing the info.

The outcomes will inform functions for future missions destined for the lunar floor. For instance, through the use of triboelectric sensors on a rover’s wheels, astronauts can measure the constructive and negative charges between the car and regolith on the lunar surface. The tip purpose is to develop applied sciences that can assist maintain it from sticking to and damaging astronaut fits and electronics throughout missions.

The flight was supported by the Flight Alternatives program, a part of NASA’s Area Know-how Mission Directorate, which quickly demonstrates space applied sciences with business flight suppliers.