The Dust Management Project

Apollo 16 Beta Cloth Sample (69003). Surface contact sampling method. "It appears the uppermost surface is enriched in fine grains compared to the bulk soil," wrote Dr. Sarah Noble. The earliest direct lunar observations showed evidence of active micrometeor "gardening" and/or dynamic electromagnetic charging, levitation and ballistic migration [NASA/JSC/MSFC].

Mark Hyatt (NASA/Glenn) & Sharon Strake (NASA/GSFC)
AIAA, 40th International
Conference on Environmental Systems
Barcelona, 11-15 July 2010

A return to the Moon to extend human presence, pursue scientific activities, use the Moon to prepare for future human missions to Mars, and expand Earth’s economic sphere, will require investment in developing new technologies and capabilities to achieve affordable and sustainable human exploration. From the operational experience gained and lessons learned during the Apollo missions, conducting long-term operations in the lunar environment will be a particular challenge, given the difficulties presented by the unique physical properties and other characteristics of lunar regolith, including dust.

The Apollo missions and other lunar explorations have identified significant lunar dust-related problems that will challenge future mission success. Comprised of regolith particles ranging in size from tens of nanometers to microns, lunar dust is a manifestation of the complex interaction of the lunar surface with multiple mechanical, electrical, and gravitational effects. The environmental and anthropogenic factors effecting the perturbation, transport, and deposition of lunar dust must be studied in order to mitigate it’s potentially harmful effects on exploration systems and human explorers.

The Dust Management Project (DMP) is tasked with the evaluation of lunar dust effects, assessment of the resulting risks, and development of mitigation and management strategies and technologies related to Exploration Systems architectures.

Lotus Coating. Just one dust mitigation strategy examined by the Dust Management Project. An uncoated radiator sample and a Lotus coated radiator sample after contamination with JSC-1 Lunar simulant.

By pursuing an integrated approach of characterization, technology development, and application focus, the DMP has made significant progress in the first three years of implementation.

The project provides coordination and integration of dust related activities in (the NASA Exploration System Mission Directorate) ESMD, with a focus on the dust related challenges associated with long duration lunar missions.

The project has established a comprehensive body of data and experience and defined and filled key gaps in knowledge and capabilities. The project has developed specific technologies useful in the mitigation and control of dust and its effects on systems. New simulants are now becoming available to assess mitigation technologies and approaches as well as perform test and verification of components and systems.

Critical information and technology deliverables will be provided directly to Exploration flight (Lunar Precursor Robotic and Constellation) programs. Lunar dust should be viewed as integrated environmental phenomena, the study of which must employ a coordinated, multidisciplinary approach. The Dust Management Project will certainly include elements exploiting theoretical studies, earth-bound experiments, key measurements conducted by early robotic missions, and development of “best design” rules and specific engineering solutions for systems and their components affected by lunar dust.

Read the paper (pdf), HERE.

NASA Glenn: Push to Moon could launch new glory days

For the first time in more than a quarter-century, a new space vehicle stands ready in NASA Kennedy Space Center's Vehicle Assembly Building in Florida. The final segments of the Ares I- X rocket, including the simulated crew module and launch abort system, were stacked on Aug. 13 on a mobile launcher platform, completing the 327-foot launch vehicle and providing the first entire look of Ares I- X's distinctive shape. The Ares I- X flight test is targeted for Oct. 31. [NASA]

John Mangels
Cleveland.com

On Oct. 31, if all goes well, a group of engineers and managers from Cleveland's NASA Glenn Research Center will gather in south Florida control rooms to watch a rocket they helped design and build soar into the early morning sky.

Read the feature article HERE.

Carbothermal Processing of Lunar Regolith using Methane

R. Balasubramaniam and U. Hegde
National Center for Space Exploration Research

S. Gokoglu
NASA Glenn Research Center
Cleveland, Ohio

The processing of lunar regolith for the production of oxygen is a key component of the ISRU, plans currently being developed by NASA. Among various candidate processes, the modeling of oxygen production by hydrogen reduction, molten salt electrolysis, and carbothermal processing are presently being pursued. In the carbothermal process, a portion of the surface of the regolith in a container is heated by exposure to a heat source such as a laser beam or a concentrated solar heat flux, so that a small zone of molten regolith is established. The molten zone is surrounded by solid regolith particles that are poor conductors of heat. A continuous flow of methane is maintained over the molten regolith zone. Our model is based on a mechanism where methane pyrolyzes when it comes in contact with the surface of the hot molten regolith to form solid carbon and hydrogen gas.

Carbon is deposited on the surface of the melt, and hydrogen is released into the gas stream above the melt surface. We assume that the deposited carbon mixes in the molten regolith and reacts with metal oxides in a reduction reaction by which gaseous carbon monoxide is liberated.

Carbon monoxide bubbles through the melt and is released into the gas stream. Oxygen is produced subsequently by (catalytically) processing the carbon monoxide downstream. In this paper, we discuss the development of a chemical conversion model of the carbothermal process to predict the rate of production of carbon monoxide.

Download the presentation, HERE.

Development of a Reactor for the Extraction of Oxygen and Volatiles From Lunar Regolith

Figure 1. Images and line drawings of the RESOLVE reactor with and without insulation. (Large image available by clicking on image or download of complete report, below.)

Julie Kleinhenz and Zengguang Yuan
National Center for Space Exploration Research, Cleveland, Ohio

Kurt Sacksteder and John Caruso
NASA Glenn Research Center, Cleveland, Ohio

47th Aerospace Sciences Meeting, AIAA; Orlando, January 2009

The RESOLVE (Regolith and Environment Science, Oxygen and Lunar Volatiles Extraction) Project, aims to extract and quantify useful resources from lunar soil. The reactor developed for RESOLVE is a dual purpose system, designed to evolve both water, at 150 °C and up to 80 psig, and oxygen, using hydrogen reduction at —900 °C. A variety of laboratory tests were performed to verify its operation and to explore the properties of the analog site soil. The results were also applied to modeling efforts which are being used to estimate the apparent thermal properties of the soil. The experimental and numerical results, along with the analog site tests, will be used to evolve and optimize future reactor designs.

The In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) program aims to develop technologies that will be critical to future exploration missions to the Moon and Mars. One such technology is the extraction and capture of mission consumables, i.e., water and oxygen, from the lunar regolith. The goal of the RESOLVE (Regolith and Environment Science, Oxygen and Lunar Volatiles Extraction) project is to prospect for and quantify these resources and demonstrate how to extract them. Intended as a package concept for a mobile lunar robotic mission, the RESOLVE project encompasses the collection and processing of —100 g batches of regolith. The system includes; extraction of regolith samples using a coring drill, crushing of the sample to an acceptable size distribution, NASA/TM—characterization of bulk regolith properties and mineralogical content, evolution of volatiles in a reactor, detection of evolved gases using a gas chromatograph, and capture and rerelease of the volatiles using absorbent beds. The objective of the package is to demonstrate the feasibility of ISRU related tasks, especially volatile and oxygen extraction processes. The results of this work will be used in the design of larger-scale processing plants to be implemented as part of a lunar outpost.

An earlier laboratory-based system was a first attempt to integrate a core sampling drill, separate reactors for volatile extraction and oxygen production and evolved gas collection and analysis instrumentation. This EBU1 (Engineering Breadboard Unit) payload provided indications of the necessary system power requirements, operating conditions, and timelines (ref. 1). During the past year a second integrated package, called EBU2, was developed in which the two reactor systems were combined into a single multipurpose reactor, and the entire payload shrunk and packaged to fit into a modest size rover (ref. 2) in preparation for field trials.

This report describes the reactor subsystem of the RESOLVE project EBU2 payload, and laboratory testing conducted to assess its performance. The combined reactor performs two functions; thermal extraction of loosely bound water, including operations up to 150 °C and 80 psi, and the chemical extraction of oxygen from iron oxides using hydrogen reduction, including operations up to 900 °C at near-ambient pressures.

Download the full review HERE.

Lunar Dust 101

James R. Gaier, Space Environment and Experiments Branch at NASA Glenn has put together an excellent premier on the fundamentals of Lunar Dust.

The Space Studies Board of the National Academies has identified "mitigation" and prior to this "understanding" of the dusty and tenuous lunar exosphere is critical prior to extended human activity on the Moon. Recently, in a preliminary follow-up on NASA's progress on recommendations made in Scientific Context for the Exploration of the Moon (2007), the Board gave NASA's practical efforts its highest grades, among its list of priorities.

An enormous amount of breakthrough research from many studies are expected to emerge from NASA and be published with proceedings from several annual conferences throughout 2009. Gaier's powerful presentation took place at Lunar Dust Filtration and Separations Workshop in Cleveland, Ohio last November.

"Largely due to rock and soil samples returned during the Apollo program, much has been learned about the composition and properties of lunar regolith. Although, for the most part, the mineral composition resembles terrestrial minerals, the characteristics of the lunar environment have led to very different weathering processes. These result in substantial differences in the particle shapes, particle size distributions, and surface chemistry. These differences lead to non-intuitive adhesion, abrasion, and possible health properties that will pose challenges to future lunar missions. An overview of lunar dust composition and properties will be given with a particular emphasis on possible health effects."

NASA released the Lunar Dust 101 presentation for download as a pdf HERE.

Some Expected Characteristics of Lunar Dust: A Geological View Applied to Engineering

Hardness vs. Geometry

Kenneth W. Street (NASA Glenn Research Center), Christian M. Schrader (BAE Systems) and Doug Rickman (NASA Marshall Space Flight Center) - Geological Society of America Meeting , Houston, October 2008 - Compared to the Earth the geologic nature of the lunar regolith is quite distinct. Even though similar minerals exist on the Earth and Moon, they may have very different properties due to the absence of chemical modification in the lunar environment.

The engineering properties of the lunar regolith reflect aspects of the parent rock and the consequences of hypervelocity meteor bombardment. On scales relevant to machinery and chemical processing for In-Situ Resource Utilization, ISRU (such as water production), the lunar regolith compositional range is much more restricted than terrestrial material. This fact impacts predictions of properties required by design engineers for constructing equipment for lunar use.

In this paper two examples will be covered. 1) Abrasion is related to hardness and hardness is a commonly measured property for both minerals and engineering materials. Although different hardness scales are routinely employed for minerals and engineering materials, a significant amount of literature is available relating the two.

As one example, we discuss how to relate hardness to abrasion for the design of lunar equipment. We also indicate how abundant the various mineral phases are and typical size distributions for lunar regolith which will impact abrasive nature. 2) Mineral characteristics that may seem trivial to the non-geologist or material scientist may have significant bearing on ISRU processing technologies.

As a second example we discuss the impact of traces of F-, Cl-, and OH-, H2O, CO2, and sulfur species which can radically alter melting points and the corrosive nature of reaction products thereby significantly changing bulk chemistry and associated processing technologies. For many engineering uses, a simulant’s fidelity to bulk lunar regolith chemistry may be insufficient. Therefore, simulant users need to engage in continuing dialogue with simulant developers and geoscientists.

Presentation available for download as pdf - HERE.

Lunar Dust Activity at Glenn

Kenneth W. Street (NASA Glenn Research Center) - NASA Lunar Dust Filtration and Separations Workshop, Cleveland, November 2008 - The fidelity of lunar simulants as compared to actual regolith is evaluated using Figures of Merit (FOM) which are based on four criteria: Particle Size, Particle Shape, Composition, and Density of the bulk material.

In practice, equipment testing will require other information about both the physical properties (mainly of the dust fraction) and composition as a function of particle size. At Glenn Research Center (GRC) we are involved in evaluating a number of simulant properties of consequence to testing of lunar equipment in a relevant environment, in order to meet Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 6 criteria.

Bulk regolith has been characterized for many decades, but surprisingly little work has been done on the dust fraction (particles less than 20 micrometers in diameter). GRC is currently addressing the information shortfall by characterizing the following physical properties: Particle Size Distribution, Adhesion, Abrasivity, Surface Energy, Magnetic Susceptibility, Tribocharging and Surface Chemistry/Reactivity.

Since some of these properties are also dependent on the size of the particles we have undertaken the construction of a six stage axial cyclone particle separator to fractionate dust into discrete particle size distributions for subsequent evaluation of these properties. An introduction to this work and progress to date is available for download as a pdf HERE.

NASA Cataract detection down to Earth

Cataracts are common among long-term space-travelers, the most common and earliest among the symptoms of unhealthy exposure to radiation, Cosmic Rays in particular. On earth, susceptibility to cataracts, is primarily a genetically inherited trait. In space, it will up an astronaut's place on the percentage scale of the dreaded "lifetime probability of Radiation Exposure Induced Death, or "REID."

Once that probability reaches 4 percent, you're grounded. Fortunately, a year on the International Space Station adds, perhaps, a single percentage point, as will a week on the Moon. Headed for Mars? Present technology, according to the Space Studies Board, will only insure a percent will exceed such a safety margin, which is one demonstration of how far the road ahead is for manned deep space exploration to become common.

Now, according to HealthNewsDigest.com, A device developed for the space program is now also valuable for eye care patients as the first noninvasive early detection device for cataracts, the leading cause of vision loss worldwide.

Researchers from the National Eye Institute (NEI), part of the National Institutes of Health, and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) collaborated to develop a simple, safe eye test for measuring a protein related to cataract formation. If subtle protein changes can be detected before a cataract develops, people may be able to reduce their cataract risk by making simple lifestyle changes, such as decreasing sun exposure, quitting smoking, stopping certain medications and controlling diabetes.

"By the time the eye's lens appears cloudy from a cataract, it is too late to reverse or medically treat this process," said Manuel B. Datiles III, M.D., NEI medical officer and lead author of the study. "This technology can detect the earliest damage to lens proteins, triggering an early warning for cataract formation and blindness."

The new device is based on a laser light technique initially developed to analyze the growth of protein crystals in a zero-gravity space environment. NASA's Rafat R. Ansari, Ph.D., senior scientist at the John H. Glenn Research Center and co-author of the study, brought the technology's possible clinical applications to the attention of NEI vision researchers when he learned that his father's cataracts were caused by changes in lens proteins.

Read more HERE.

Destination: Moon

Ohio researchers help plot the first return trip since 1972 while keeping an eye on Mars

By Kevin Mayhood
THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

CLEVELAND -- Before NASA astronauts rocket to Mars, they're supposed to return to the moon in a sweet new ride to test-drive everything from high-tech maps and buggies to new spacesuits and next-generation power sources.

"We're going to use the moon as a proving ground to go on to Mars and other destinations," said Stephen N. Simons, associate director of Lunar Systems at NASA Glenn Research Center, which is working on a host of projects with scientists from universities in Ohio and across the country.

"It's a lot easier to learn how to go to Mars when you're only three or four days away as opposed to being a year or more away."

In a speech four years ago, President Bush set a goal to land on the moon by 2020 before pushing on to Mars. Although there are critics of manned space exploration and its costs, NASA is carrying on with its mandate -- at least until the next commander in chief says otherwise.

For now, Ohio researchers join hundreds of others nationwide who are busy preparing for the first moon landing since 1972.

EDITORS NOTE: NASA IS A CREATURE OF CONGRESS, NOT THE PRESIDENT. AND SHOULD THE 'NEXT COMMANDER IN CHIEF END UP BEING BARACK H. OBAMA, he MIGHT HAVE TO CONTENT WITH A CONGRESS PRESENTLY BEING RUN BY MEMBERS OF HIS OWN PARTY. RECENTLY, CONGRESS AGREED IN PRINCIPLE TO INCLUDE MORE THAN A BILLION DOLLARS IN NASA's FY 2009 BUDGET ABOVE WHAT THE AGENCY HAD REQUESTED. WHILE OBAMA MAY HAVE A STUNTED VIEW OF OUR NEED FOR A ROBUST SPACE PROGRAM, MEMBERS LIKE MARK UDALL (D-CO) APPARENTLY DO NOT.

Read more HERE.