Researchers at Washington State University may be on their way to the Moon, owing to a cutting-edge cleaning technique. The press release reported that the team discovered that a liquid nitrogen spray could remove virtually all moon dust from a space suit, possibly resolving a critical issue for future moon-landing missions.
The Lunar Dust Dilemma
Humans have reached the Moon already, but the problem with keeping them clean remains. Lunar dust adheres to everything it touches, much like the clingiest packing peanuts. Worse than packing peanuts, the dust is made up of tiny particles with the consistency of ground fiberglass.
Ian Wells, senior in WSU's Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering and first author of the article, explained in the press release that lunar dust is electrostatically charged, abrasive, and could go anywhere, making it challenging to deal with. At the absolute least, astronauts could end up being covered with a fine coating of regolith.
According to EurekAlert! astronauts used a brush to wipe the dust from their spacesuits during the six crewed Apollo missions to the moon in the 1960s and early 1970s; however, it did not work very well. The abrasive and microscopic dust particles can enter engines and electronics.
Wells noted that lunar dust poses problems to Moon missions, especially to astronauts when they go home. They got regolith inside the spacesuits, breaking the seals and rendering some costly suits useless. Astronauts even had lunar hay fever, and experts believe prolonged contact with the dust might induce lung damage comparable to Black Lung Disease.
By 2025, NASA hopes to land the first woman and first person of color on the Moon through its Artemis mission with the goal of eventually establishing a base camp there for further planetary exploration. Therefore, they are interested in solving the lunar dust problem.
How Liquid Nitrogen Spray Will Help
Researchers report in their study, titled "Lunar Dust Removal and Material Degradation From Liquid Nitrogen Sprays,"' published in the journal Acta Astronautica, that the liquid nitrogen spray removed 98% of lunar dust simulant in a vacuum environment with minimal damage to the space suits. It also performed better than any techniques that were studied in the past.
Wells noted that liquid nitrogen is abundant on Earth and could play a big role as a cleaning agent in a simple manner, like cleaning space suits. Yahoo! reported that the idea is for astronauts to walk into an airlock that has not yet been pressurized, where they will get sprayed with liquid nitrogen, which picks up the lunar dust and removes it from the space suits.
WSU researchers also noted that the liquid nitrogen was gentle in cleaning the space suits. Whereas a simple brush could cause damage, it will take about 75 cycles of liquid nitrogen spray before damage occurs.
The research is a product of a NASA grant after winning the top prize in 2022 from the Breakthrough, Innovative, and Game-changing (BIG) Idea Challenge. The team is now working on a model to test complex interactions between the dust particles and liquid nitrogen to see how well it could be a space suit.
Watch the video below of the experiment by WSU researchers using a liquid nitrogen spray to remove lunar dust:
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