Sandblasting by Lunar Dust Poses Serious Risk to Cargo and Crew on the Moon [Studies]

Sandblasting by Lunar Dust Poses Serious Risk to Cargo and Crew on the Moon [Studies]
(Photo: Wikimedia Commons/U.S. Navy photo by Photographer's Mate 3rd Class Michael D. Cole / Released)

New studies warned about the risks of sandblasting as NASA prepared for its Apollo missions.

Lunar Dust's Sandblasting Poses Serious Risks

A striking forecast comes from a new idea about how rockets destroy moon soil: powered lunar landings could scatter four to ten times as much debris as previously believed. According to two new studies, lunar dust launched by rockets could seriously endanger cargo and crew members on the moon by sandblasting them if proper safety measures aren't taken.

One of the world's foremost authorities on the interactions between rocket plumes and planetary surfaces is Phil Metzger, the physicist responsible for the latest computations. Following his research in two publications in the journal Icarus, he advocates for increased international collaboration as space agencies design long-term lunar infrastructure, including human colonies.

According to Metzger, the director of the Stephen W. Hawking Center for Microgravity Research and Education at the University of Central Florida, there could be ten times more damage to a spacecraft from lunar dust than previously thought. To enable multiple parties to operate on the moon, the international community has to cooperate on international accords and norms.

Mihály Horányi, a lunar physicist at the University of Colorado Boulder who was not part of the research, said the studies are relevant, at least for engineering and safety reasons. If these plumes become more significant than initially thought, people should at least be ready for that possibility.

Moon dust is an unpleasant substance that was pulverized into existence by meteoroid strikes that broke rocks. The material stirred up at low speeds can cause the jagged debris to kink up spacesuit joints, jam radiators, and irritate astronauts' eyes and lungs. Since the moon has no atmosphere, nothing can slow the materials propelled upwards by a rocket landing there. Rocket exhaust can accelerate tiny dust particles, allowing them to fly hundreds of kilometers or leave the moon altogether.

ALSO READ: Lunar Evolution: Moon Flipped Inside Out 4.2 Billion Years Ago

Sandblasting on the Moon

According to previous studies, the six Apollo Lunar Modules' (LMs) landings on the moon between 1969 and 1972 were not as gentle as thought. They turned out to be violent as the engine released high-velocity lunar particles that strafed the lunar surface.

To fully comprehend the interactions between a descending Lunar Module (LM) and the lunar surface, John Lane and Chris Immer of the ASRC Aerospace Corporation at the Kennedy Space Center analyzed the original Apollo landing film.

According to Metzger, new techniques were created to measure the LM's shadows as they descended in the vintage Apollo landing footage. By measuring these shadows, they have ascertained the form of the blowing dust clouds beneath them. This is one of our primary sources of experimental data on soil ejection from rocket exhaust.

The Apollo footage also demonstrates that the LM engine's blast was strong enough to move rocks up to six inches in size.

Aside from the lunar landers, solar storms sandblast the moon. The solar wind is the stream of charged particles, or ions that the sun continuously releases into space. Prior to this discovery, scientists were aware that solar ions might collide with and eject material from the lunar surface in a phenomenon known as sputtering.

This sandblasting impact intensifies with strong bursts of solar plasma, or charged gas, known as coronal mass ejections (CMEs), according to a 2011 computer simulation.

In a cloud many times the size of Earth, a powerful CME can launch roughly a billion tons of solar particles at speeds of up to a million miles per hour (1.6 million kilometers per hour). The proportion of heavier ions, such as helium, oxygen, and iron, in CMEs is far larger. Since these heavier atoms impact the moon more forcefully than protons do, they can knock more atoms off the surface.

"We found that when this massive cloud of plasma strikes the moon, it acts like a sandblaster and easily removes volatile material from the surface," said study co-author William Farrell.