AstroBoys - Space Apps Challenge

AstroBoys| Dust Yourself Off

Project Details

Awards & Nominations

AstroBoys has received the following awards and nominations. Way to go!

Global Nominee

The Challenge | Dust Yourself Off

The Apollo missions showed us that lunar dust not only clung to everything and was impossible to fully remove, but it was also dangerous to humans and damaging to spacecraft systems. Your challenge is to develop a way to detect, map, and mitigate lunar dust to reduce the effects on astronauts or spacecraft interior systems.

Moon Dust: Now We Can See You

An operating module (“Prophet”) for the precise detection & filtration of ferocious moon dust created by Astroboys, with the help of data provided by NASA in the NASA space apps challenge 2019.

NASA International Space Apps Challenge 2019

Members: Stephen Wallen, Tamal Ganguly, Ankur Sikarwar, Devon McKee, Yash Gadhade, Himanchal Chandra

Response to: “Dust Yourself Off” Challenge

Moon Dust: Now We Can See You

An operating module (“Prophet”) for the precise detection & filtration of ferocious moon dust created by Astroboys’, with the help of data provided by NASA in the NASA space apps challenge 2019.

Introduction

Lunar dust is proven to have harmful repercussions on astronauts and their space equipment in the past. More specifically, lunar dust can cause astronauts respiratory problems as well as decreasing the life expectancy of hardware. Our solution to the problem is to implement new systems to detect and monitor the precise location of the dust in spacecraft so it can be mitigated immediately.

Astroboys’ “Prophet” is a completely working module for dust detection and mitigation system. We encourage those who are interested to access our open-source data on our website at http://lunardust.appspot.com

The Problem:

As we already know, the harmful effect that moon dust has on astronautical equipment is not something to ignore. The primary issue regarding hazardous lunar dust has been previous systems being unable to detect the location of dust particles and invoking an appropriate response. Unlike these older systems, astroboys’ prophet greatly reduces the risk of lunar exploration by implementing a detection system that quickly responds to high volumes of dust.

The Process & the Technology

“Prophet” Nodes

Sensor Systems - We began designing the system in CAD software (Fritzing) [I am including a brief description of how we used CAD in this first paragraph]

Our approach to this issue started with brainstorming a multi-node distributed dust detection system to monitor the dust density in various parts of the spacecraft. After writing our ideas in the form of diagrams we discussed implementation and technological features that would make “Prophet” advantageous compared to previous lunar dust detection technology. Starting by creating a 3D model of what the nodes would look like using CAD software, our team discussed how we would implement advantageous features in the hardware design of our product. The first advantage that “Prophet” has over previous systems is that our nodes consume less power. Low power is crucial for space exploration because we have not yet found a way to harness the moon’s resources to generate a large amount of energy. Another notable feature is that sensor systems are capable of detecting microscopic lunar dust particles in that particular area.

“Prophet” systems have deep sleep implemented in order to reduce power consumption. Nodes are awakened during predetermined intervals to take reading for the dust density. If the dust density normal then it stores the data in the memory until the end of the day. At the end of the day, nodes transmit 8 -12 passive data points collected throughout the day. However, if dust density is above threshold levels, the device changes its state to active mode and starts to take readings at a more frequent interval and reduces its sleep interval. Inactive mode, “Prophet” nodes also publish this real-time data on an MQTT broker server. This helps the astronauts to monitor a particular area of the spacecraft remotely without risking themselves. For example, astronauts and engineers will now have the ability to monitor the dust levels in areas like an airlock after an EVA mission.

Another aspect of our “Prophet” nodes that make our product comparatively advantageous to previous systems is its ambient light energy harvesting. Our device contains an efficient energy-harvesting circuit that extracts energy from the ambient lights using solar panels. This energy alone can sustain the deep sleep periods of the device as the current draw during that period is very low. The only time when the energy consumption is considerable is during the data transmission to the broker server. The choice to implement energy harvesting from ambient light is a response to the previous system’s reliability. We believe that if monitoring and detection system’s life expectancy is increased, they would be more reliable and have a lasting impact on lunar explorations.

Working video of Prophet : 1)

2) https://drive.google.com/open?id=1z3H13GJ-NbEZqo_hGz8svWjiWbGYZszQ

Making of Prophet:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AaqPn_acT5O_L1CYx...

Air Filtration Systems

The overarching goal of our project is to make lunar exploration a safe environment for its participants. One of the biggest threats to that is lunar dust, especially when compared to the well being of the explorers on the moon. Lunar dust inhalation has both short term effects and long term effects. Short term effects include cell death and respiratory inflammation, while long term effects range anywhere from abnormal cell growth, loss of neurons, and possibly death.

To reduce these risks, our team used a 2 stage filtration process for filtering the air inside of a vehicle. The pre-filter in our model is used to reduce the load on a high-efficiency filter. Generally, the pre-filter will capture particles of size greater than 100 microns and the high-efficiency filter captures particles of size less than 5 microns.

In addition, we’ve included a dust monitoring system that is installed on the inside of the filtration system at the back of the filter (air outlet) which monitors the outlet air quality whether if the filters need to be changed or not.

Our idea is to install many air filtration systems inside the spacecraft and each filtration system acts as a separate node and each node will transmit real-time data to the server and can be collected over the database. Data can be sampled from the collected data and various pattern recognition techniques can be applied to the sampled data for anomaly detection.

Electrodynamic Screens

At this stage in the process, our team had designed a solution for how “Prophet” systems would detect lunar dust. However, we had still not discussed a mitigation system that would be effective in getting rid of the dust without risking the well-being of lunar explorers. Our team decided that electrodynamic screens would be the most effective when combating lunar dust.

The integration of transparent electro-dynamic screen (EDS) on the front surface of solar mirrors and glass cover plates of photovoltaic panels has a strong potential to significantly reduce the frequency of water-based cleaning needed to mitigate losses from dust depositions present in lunar surface .The idea emphasizes to develop and evaluate prototype transparent EDS-integrated mirrors and solar panels for their self-cleaning functions, with an aim to keep the collectors clean at a low cost without water or manual labour. The Electrodynamics screen consists of a set of parallel transparent electrodes screen-printed on the optical surface and embedded in a thin transparent dielectric film.

By applying three-phase, low current, low frequency (4-20 Hz) high voltage-pulses (up to 1 kV) to the electrodes, electro-dynamic repulsion forces and a traveling wave are created for removing dust particles from the surface of the collectors. EDS use a Coulomb force to repel charged dust particles on the surface of the screen. A traveling electrostatic wave is created by applying voltage to electrodes embedded in the surface. An array of parallel electrodes is placed on the collector's surface. Electrodes are divided into 3 alternating phases. Electrodes from each phase are joined together by a bus bar. Bus bars are then connected to their respective phase. A power supply applies approximately 1 kV to electrodes with a 50% duty cycle. Active electrodes create a non-uniform electric field with field lines extending from active electrodes to neighbouring grounded electrodes. Three-phase switching moves the peak electric field across the surface of the EDS screen which creates a traveling electrostatic wave. This wave moves perpendicular to the electrode lines. The direction of the movement is dictated by the order of the switching.

A Responsive Webpage

Lastly, the Astroboys team wanted to create a way for lunar explorers and their associates to access our open source project. This is why we created a responsive webpage using web technologies such as Node.js, Plot.ly, jQuery, and MQTT to display sensor data in a way conducive to rapid analysis. In this project, our web architecture took advantage of networked cloud services (specifically, Google Cloud) to expand our ability to respond to any number of web requests, at low traffic or high. This allowed our web architecture to be not only scalable but accessible too, as we could run instances of our app on regions throughout the world.

Impact

“Prophet” systems give lunar explorers security that has not been there in the past. Our team created “Prophet” systems for the advancement of lunar exploration and the wellbeing of human-kind. We want these systems to be implemented in real-world scenarios, but we are merely college students that have little power to see this dream become a reality. With the endorsement of NASA, we hope that we can establish communications with people who are knowledgeable about space exploration and improve our product so that it can become a reliable source of security for the explorers that need it and ultimately make a positive impact for our future.

Goals

Overall, Team Astroboys are proud of what we were able to accomplish in just one weekend. However, we have big plans if we are to be elected to the globals. If Team Astroboys are elected to globals, we promise to do the following:

1) Demonstrate each and every element of one “Prophet” system in the same place.

2) Advocate for the scalability of prophet systems and argue for their use in real-world scenarios.

3) Upgrade our services with the time that we are given in-between the qualifying stages and globals

References

https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/alsj-dustbrush.html

https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/experiment/display.action?id=1969-099C-07

https://www.nasa.gov/topics/solarsystem/features/leaping-lunar-dust.html

https://www.sciencealert.com/nasa-just-explained-why-moon-dust-is-levitating-above-the-lunar-surface

https://www.space.com/35240-moon-dust-levitates-nasa-study.html

https://nasa3d.arc.nasa.gov/models

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0304388612001118

https://www.outerplaces.com/science/item/18409-lunar-dust-toxic-astronauts-moon-stony-brook