π Rauf Aliev shared interesting facts from the recently read book Artemis by Andy Weir: the main nightmare for future lunar bases is not radiation or vacuum, but ordinary dust.
Earthly dust has been rubbed against rocks, blown by the wind, and washed by water for centuries - grains become round. Lunar regolith, however, is unrefined: these are microscopic fragments, sharp as glass. During the Apollo missions, this stuff quickly wore down the outer layers of spacesuits made of beta cloth, scratched visors and instrument scales to the point of illegibility, and clogged seals in joints, causing the suits to start leaking air. Pete Conrad, after Apollo 12, wrote in a NASA report that after 8 hours on the surface, the joints of the spacesuit wore out more than after over a hundred hours of training on Earth - the air leak in his cuffs reached 0.25 psi/min with an allowable limit of 0.30.
The second problem is static. During the day, ultraviolet knocks electrons out of dust particles, at night they are charged by the solar wind, and each particle sticks firmly to visors and radiators. The hypothesis that the potential difference at the day-night boundary raises dust into kilometer-high "fountains" was specifically tested by the LADEE probe - and was not confirmed: it recorded only a dense cloud of dust at the very surface, raised by micrometeorite impacts, not by static.
The strangest thing is the smell. Astronauts complained of "lunar hay fever" - dust in the cabin after going outside caused runny noses and sneezing, and almost everyone who took off their helmet said it smelled like spent gunpowder. The leading hypothesis is "dangling bonds" in the crystal lattice: meteorites break rocks in a vacuum, fresh chips do not have time to oxidize, but as soon as they enter the humid oxygen air of the module, they oxidize vigorously, hence the smell.
The solution was found only recently - electrodynamic shields (EDS), developed for over 20 years by the SwampWorks laboratory at Kennedy Space Center. A mesh of electrodes (in new versions - made of carbon nanotubes) is woven into glass or fabric, alternating current creates a traveling electromagnetic field, and charged dust literally jumps off the surface. In March 2025, such a shield was first tested directly on the Moon - on the landing module Blue Ghost by Firefly Aerospace, on glass and radiators.
#interesting_fact@rvnikita_blog #space@rvnikita_blog #moon@rvnikita_blog #nasa@rvnikita_blog #pete_conrad@rvnikita_blog #rauf_aliev@rvnikita_blog
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