How do you clean up clingy space dust? Zap it with an electron beam

Tuesday, September 15, 2020 - 07:10 in Astronomy & Space

The NASA Artemis missions aim to send astronauts to the moon by 2024. But to succeed, they’ll need to solve big problems caused by some tiny particles: dust. Impacts on the moon’s surface have crushed lunar rock into dust over billions of years (SN: 1/17/19). The resulting particles are like “broken shards of glass,” says Mihály Horányi, a physicist at the University of Colorado Boulder. This abrasive material can damage equipment and even harm astronauts’ health if inhaled (SN: 12/3/13). Making matters worse, the sun’s radiation gives moon dust an electric charge, so it sticks to everything. Horányi and colleagues have discovered a new method for combatting lunar dust’s static cling, using a low-powered electron beam to make dust particles fly off surfaces. It complements existing approaches to the sticky problem, the researchers report online August 8 in Acta Astronautica. During the Apollo missions, astronauts relied on a low-tech system to clean lunar...

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