One of the most serious issues that today prevents a safe landing and exploration of the lunar soil is caused by the properties of the satellite dust. It is very fine, in order of micrometers, and it has dielectric properties due to UV rays, that cause it to be lifted electro-statically off the surface of the moon to inconvenient locations at inconvenient times.

As a consequence, the main problem is about cracking moon dust on astronauts’ space suits, especially in the junctions and in general on critical points.

Our idea to face this obstacle consists of using two different types of “guns”.
First the “Dust Reader”, which employs a portable Raman laser spectrometer for the detection of regolith particles: they are composed for about 50% of silica. This device returns points where regolith is on the equipement, showing them on a dispaly.

The second gun, called “Freeze Gun”, uses compressed CO2 gas, which expands in a specially designed expansion chamber-nozzle, forming nanoscale crystals which aggregate before exiting the nozzle into micron-scale “snow-flakes” in a high velocity CO2 gas stream, directed at an oblique angle onto a surface to be cleaned.

References:

• Jaffe L. D. (1965) Strength of the lunar dust. J. Geophys.
• NASA (1969) Analysis of Apollo 8 Photography and Observations. NASA SP-201. 337 pp.
• Researches about Raman spectrometer employed in the space.
• Taylor G. J., Warner R. D., Keil K., Ma M.-S., and Schmitt R. A. (1980) Silicate liquid immiscibility, evolved lunar rocks and the formation of KREEP. In Proceedings of the Conference on the Lunar Highlands Crust (J. J. Papike and R. B. Merrill, eds.), pp. 339–352. Pergamon, New York.
• Tranfield, E., J. C. Rask, W. T. Wallace, C. McCrossin, K. Kuhlman, D. Loftus, 2009. Chemical activation of lunar dust specimens and simulants, NASA Lunar Science Institute conference, abstract and poster.