NASA needs
more moondust. And not just a few sterile baggies of moondust. NASA engineers
need tons of it - or a suitable simulant.
NASA has lots of new plans
for lunar gadgets and lunar equipment, given the new plans to return
to the Moon. Since we've been there before, and we've gathered samples, we
know what a problem moondust can be.
The lunar
soil (or regolith) covering the Moon's surface is a complex material that
is sharp and abrasive - with interlocking glass shards and fragments. It is a
powdery grit that gets into everything, jamming moving parts and abrading
spacesuit fabrics. It can also get into living spaces, where it is impossible
to brush off, due to ease with which lunar
dust picks up electrostatic charges. And can even irritate the lungs of
astronauts. Astronaut Jack Schmitt had a case of "lunar dust hay
fever" during his stay on the Moon.
For testing purposes,
noting else will do. And supplies of the real thing, brought back during the
Apollo program, have run out. "We don't have enough real moondust to go
around," says Larry Taylor, director of Planetary Geosciences Institute at
the University of Tennessee in Knoxville. To run all the tests, "we need
to make a well-qualified lunar simulant."
An early substitute, JSC-1,
was developed in 1993. It consisted of basaltic volcanic cinder cone deposits
from a quarry near Flagstaff, AZ. It's replacement, JSC-1a, comes in three
different varieties based on grain size: fine, moderate grain and coarse grain.
Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) is working on three new simulants that will
provide fake moondust from three different lunar areas; two will represent mare
and polar highlands regions, while the third will represent the sharp, glassy,
jagged regolith that is the worst that the Moon has to offer.
The Moon offers too many
distinct varieties of regolith to economically simulate each one.
We will
develop root simulants and manufacture specific simulants from these, but also
enable investigators to enhance the products as needed," Carol McLemore,
program manager at MSFC, stated. "I liken this process to baking a cake:
depending on the type of cake you want, you need certain ingredients for it to
come out right and taste right. Getting the recipe right whether for a cake or
lunar simulants is critical."
Source
materials for simulants will probably come from many diverse locations in
Montana, Arizona, Virginia, Florida and Hawaii. For example, the mare simulant
will use ilmenite, a crystalline iron-titanium oxide. Once NASA understands how
to make the simualants, and determines the best composition, certification
procedures for vendors will ensure that fake moondust meets NASA standards.
More lunar dust news:
Read more about fake lunar
dust at NASA.
(This Science Fiction in
the News story used with permission from Technovelgy.com - where science meets fiction.)
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