About us

Manoel Serafim (16 years old): A Brazilian with technical degree in mechatronics ,specialized in industrial automation and in the design of tech products. Also a back-end programmer with experience in Java and Python. With multilanguage qualification in Portuguese, English and Mandarin

Laura Chirila (16 years): I'm a grade 10 student from Romania. My passion is computer programming and robotics. I know several programming language: Python, Java, C++, C# and web development, I also know some machine learning and computer vision. I worked on several robotics projects with Arduino, Raspberry Pi and other single board computers and won several prizes at international and national competitions. You can see more details on my portfolio website: https://laurachirila.com/

Bogdan Preda (17 years): I'm a grade 11 student from Romania. I like to do hardware projects, especially robotics. I have 3D design skills in Fusion 360 and I also know C++ and Python, and I did some projects with Raspberry Pi and Arduino. I am the leader of my school's robotics team involved in the First Tech Challenge competition.

Overview

All astronauts who walked on the Moon reported difficulties with lunar dust. These problems were likely worsened by the fact that the dust was electrically charged, which enhanced its adhesive properties. Here, we try to decrease the effect of lunar dust properties and its impact on astronauts with a pieces of hardware and software, together with a discussion of the three main problem areas: (1) Dust Adhesion and Abrasion, (2) Surface Electric Fields, (3) Dust Transport.

Goals

1. Protect all critical mission equipment, including solar panels, instrumentation and camera ports, optical mirrors, and robotic arms, against dust accumulations.
2. Minimize the risk to life posed by inhalation and ingestion of toxic dusts that may contaminate air and water inside the crew cabin.
3. Reduce the contamination of extravehicular activity (EVA) suits that will otherwise become covered and severely hindered or inoperable from the constant exposure to lunar debris.
4. Explore Aerogel properties to develop easier ways of detecting lunar dust.

Specifications

Our electrostatic repeller uses high current to produce an electromagnetic field that is concentrated in ionizing everyday dust particle, making them positively charged (stealing electrons from it), after that we created one thing called a Faraday Cage, were electrons get trapped in one place so it does not interfere with the sensors readings. Using the Coulomb’s inverse square law, we forced every positively charged particle to be now in contact of a positive electrostatic force, and in an abruptly manner it shoot the particles away. We use open data centers to research the properties of the lunar regolith and how it behaves in electromagnetic fields. With the lunar source book, indicated by moderator John Rollings, we come to the conclusion that not all lunar regolith is positively charged, considering that some of them are not able to absorb sufficient gamma radiation from the sun because of its chemical composition, and that these exceptions are a real threat considering the regolith properties of adhesion. To resolve this problem we reached the conclusion of using aerogel polymers to stop the uncharged lunar debris. Silica Aerogel polymers does not react with the lunar dust and are a very light material which bonds properties of great help in covering external material, like high thermal insulation value, (0,005W/mK), high specific surface area (500-1200 m²/g) and high porosity (80 - 99.8%).

Diagram of the product with it’s components

Circuit diagram of the power supply for the electrodes

Our future plans

In the future we plan to explore more physical properties of aerogel, along with improving the structural portability of our systems.

Full CAD

https://viewer.autodesk.com/id/dXJuOmFkc2sub2JqZWN0czpvcy5vYmplY3Q6YTM2MHZpZXdlci90NjM3MDcwNjcyNTYyODE4ODIyXzc3N2UzYTZkLWQ0M2MtNGU1ZS1iYzIwLWZmNDg4MWEwZWZmYi5jb2xsYWJvcmF0aW9u?sheetId=NDU5ZDcwNjUtNzY1Yi00NWUwLThiOGItZThiNWY3ZDhhMzU2&designtype=collaboration

List of the components for the power supply:

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1SVZfEwB7nmlQ458CqXHT2edsCDrgKeRQ7R4tSBnrZ3M/edit#gid=0

Resources used:

• https://www-pub.iaea.org/mtcd/meetings/PDFplus/2010/cn180/cn180_papers/ftp_p1-25.pdf
• https://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2006/30jan_smellofmoondust
• https://www.nasa.gov/centers/johnson/pdf/486014main_StubbsImpactOnExploration.4075.pdf
• https://www.nasa.gov/centers/johnson/pdf/486014main_StubbsImpactOnExploration.4075.pdf
• https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archive/nasa/casi.ntrs.nasa.gov/20180005733.pdf