FRIMA| Dust Yourself Off

Project Details

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.

Shake it Off

Our project gathers lunar dust in three ways: Attracting space dust using carbon tube nanofibers with electrodes. Using Electrodynamic Dust Shield (EDS). Using a folding cabin that creates a closed space outside the spacecraft.

FRIMA

Background

  • Why did you build this project? To find effective ways to detect, separate and store lunar astronaut dust when entering the ship.
  • What inspired your team to choose this challenge? That moon dust is something not well known and can have serious short and long term effects. In the case of the human being they can be respiratory diseases, intoxication, among others. In the case of machinery, it can cause visibility problems, since this dust adheres to everything and has a lot of friction. This can cause the space machinery not to work completely and make missions less effective, putting the lives of astronauts at risk.

What it Does

  • How does your solution resolve the problems posed in this challenge?

While investigating whether or not it is convenient to store the lunar dust, we concluded that it could be implemented to create 3D structures in future missions to the Moon or Mars. Lunar dust mixed with simple polymers such as plastic (which can be found in astronaut trash) creates a polymer composite concrete which can be used in a special 3D printer to create infrastructure. The data previously stated are taken from data by NASA Swamp Works Lab in Kennedy Space Center in Florida. With this idea in mind, we thought that instead of repelling all lunar dust we could attract it through systems using electrodes and store them for further research or use. These are our solutions through three systems for dust mitigation in the astronauts space suit, outside the spacecraft and inside the spacecraft.

1. Space suit.

Add an extra thin layer to the space suit with carbon tube nanofibers with electrodes throughout the space suit to attract lunar dust into the storage deposits.

2. Space craft

Use Electrodynamic Dust Shield (EDS) to attract lunar dust into deposits throughout the space ship.

3. Using a folding cabin that creates a closed space outside the spacecraft. This is where all of the lunar dust from the suit will be collected.

  • How does your solution resolve the problems posed in this challenge? Share all the relevant details about your submission. Share failures as well as successes if they are interesting.

It saves lunar dust for further implementation for infrastructure in the moon and Mars (creating the concrete polymer mixture with lunar dust and astronaut trash aka plastic) while keeping astronauts and spacecrafts clean.

NASA Resources

  • What NASA data and NASA resources did you use in your solution?

https://open.nasa.gov

https://data.nasa.gov/browse

https://api.nasa.gov/

https://code.nasa.gov/

https://neo.sci.gsfc.nasa.gov/

https://worldview.earthdata.nasa.gov/

https://soundcloud.com/nasa

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

https://www.nasa.gov/connect/ebooks/index.html

https://data.usgs.gov/datacatalog/

  • Why did you use these data? Remember all Space Apps submissions must use a NASA resource (data, images, references, etc.) to be eligible for global judging

Because this data comes directly from the NASA and manages all the information taken during the expedition by NASA to the moon (which is what we need in our project).

Space Apps Offers

  • Did you take advantage of any Offers from Space Apps Collaborators or local sponsors to make your project?

No.

  • What were they and how were they helpful?

They were documents and papers taken directly from the NASA dataset provided to us during the event. They were helpful and gave us enough information to make our project.

Future Plans

  • How can you improve your project?

Reducing power used by the systems because it requires very high voltage which can consume energy. Make the system using clean energy maybe taking advantage of radiation.

  • Do you plan to continue working on this project after Space Apps 2019?

Yes.

Built With

  • Insert the hardware and software tools you used here. For example, what coding languages did you use? What hardware did you use (cell phones, Arduino, Raspberry Pi, etc.)?

We used NASA’s Data Portal and more specifically:

Try it Out

  • Where can we find your submission to try ourselves? Post a link to your public code repository (e.g., GitHub) or a link to an app store (e.g., iTunes, Google Play). You can also provide a demo of you showcasing the project in the form of a video link.

Tags

  • Add some tags so we can quickly search and identify your project! Some examples of tags are shared below: #computer vision, #machine learning, #artificial intelligence, #javascript, #ruby, #python, #react, #earth science, #moon, #satellite, #radio, #flight, #solar system, #exoplanet.....

#lunar dust, #spaceapps2019, #moon