Lunatics| Dust Yourself Off

Project Details

Awards & Nominations

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

Global Finalist
Local Peoples' Choice Winner

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.

Project D.U.S.T. (Displacement and Utilization through Sustainable Technology)

Project D.U.S.T. creates extra-planetary sustainable environments for astronauts, landers, and satellites.

Lunatics

GitHub Repository

https://github.com/LunaticsSpaceApps/Materials

About Us



The problem: What’s Wrong with Moon Dust?


Lunar dust is created by impacts on the moon’s surface, such as from micrometeorites, lunar landings, and rocket engines. Sun exposure ionizes the dust and creates rapidly moving, electrically charged particles.

Their microscopically small size, coupled with their sharpness, means that they can embed themselves within material while also cutting through it. Sometimes the victim is a hatch seal, and other times it’s an astronaut. Lunar dust has been shown to destroy lung tissue and brain cells, and astronauts exposed to it can go home with scarred lungs.


Every single person who has set foot on the moon has suffered from lunar dust exposure. Apollo astronaut Harrison Schmitt described his symptoms as a “lunar hay fever.” But exposure is much worse than a stuffy nose and cough. In an experiment conducted by researchers from Stony Brook University, lunar dust killed up to 90% of lung and brain cells exposed to it. And the effects don’t have to stop at biological damage — hatch seals and spacesuits, both of which stand between astronauts and certain death, degrade rapidly under the influence of moon dust. Long term stays on the moon are nearly impossible without addressing this critical problem.

The Solution

Our solution is to create electromagnetic fields to take advantage of the particles’ ionization and miniscule mass. These properties of lunar dust allow electromagnetic fields to accelerate the individual particles.



Recyclable Object Decontaminator


The ROD is made up of several components, all serving one specific purpose: the collection and repurposing of lunar dust from particularly inaccessible spots.

The ROD consists of a main handle and a disposable fabric cover. The handle contains a coil of wire, a 9-volt battery, and a USB-C charging port. The battery powers the coil, creating the electromagnetic field which can attract and repel the particles surrounding the ROD. The property of attraction and repulsion is dictated by the direction of the current in the coil. A switch is in place in order to allow the current to travel in both directions. The direction switch can be seen next to the power switch.

The switch functions through a 4-way (or crossover) switch within the circuitry as shown below.


The direction of the switches dictate the dirrection of the current.

The fabric cover collects the dust particles on itself, after which the dust can be utilized in sustainable space hydroponics as a substrate, or even repurposed as cement for moon bases. The cover itself then can be reused since our device is modular, and it can be disposed of while the rest of the product remains untouched. The lightweight nature of the fabric, and the cheap production cost, allow it to be sent in large quantities to the moon and beyond.



Spacesuit Dust Deflector

The importance of a spacesuit’s integrity cannot be overstated. Any atrophy of the suit’s material poses a serious issue for the health of the astronaut inside. Lunar dust accelerates this decomposition by constantly attacking the suit. Additionally, when an astronaut re-enters their habitat with a dusty suit, they may end up breathing in the dust, causing illness and permanent damage to the lungs.

Leveraging the charged nature of lunar dust particles, our solution to spacesuit exposure involves creating an electromagnetic field around the suit to severely reduce the number of collisions with dust particles.

A single wire is coiled inside the suit’s torso, isolated from both the suit’s occupant and outside forces. When an electric current is run through this wire, the resulting movement of electrons generates an electromagnetic field. This field repels the incoming charged dust particles, shielding the suit from contact.

Hatch Dust Guard

Hatch seals are especially vulnerable to the effects of lunar dust. As the critical point where the vacuum of space meets a human-habitable area, the seals of a hatch need to endure constant bombardment from dust particles, which causes them to deteriorate quickly.

Adapting the technology we discussed for spacesuits to the hatch can impede the disintegration of the seals and thus greatly extend the lifespan of the hatch. Placing current-carrying wires in the doorway directly surrounding the hatch will allow it to reap the same benefits as our space-suit technology.

What Have We Accomplished?

We think that our solution can bring humankind closer to the reality that sci-fi novelists dream of. By mitigating moon dust exposure, we can keep astronauts and machines healthy for longer. Long term stays will become feasible. Who knows? Maybe in the near future, we’ll establish humanity’s first lunar colony.

Resources Used