Lunar Dust

Almost 70% of the Earth is covered by the ocean and the rest of it is where we stand, so that includes mountains, valleys and various landforms. There are many layers of different kinds of soil which together make our land on which we walk. If we look back in time, by back means at the time after the Big Bang clouds of dust which clustered due to gravity formed the Earth and other planets, since then by various natural factors land and water were formed. After their formation not all planets went under the same process; different planets had their different features like some are severely hot whereas some are extremely cold, few have craters due to meteors colliding on them while some have a non uniform shape. 

 

To study about other planets we use satellites which allows us to remotely study the particular planet which includes detection of water and study various characteristics of the planet like surface temperature ,weather changes throughout time and about the atmosphere and the gases present in it. Various rovers have also been sent to the planet like Mars and to our natural satellite Moon which are near to earth to practically study the land composition by performing tests and also to confirm the presence of life. NASA has also conducted successful missions to send men to the Moon, but with these missions comes many risks. Besides technical failures there are many other factors which can affect the mission. One of the major factors is ‘Lunar Dust’. 

As we know the moon has less gravity than the Earth, its gravity is about 1/6th of Earth it means if you weigh 60 kg on Earth then your weight on Moon would be 10 kg. Due to this if you throw anything vertically upward with the same force on the Moon as of earth then it will take much more time to fall back or it can also start orbiting the Moon. So if the mass of a particle  is less then it can take more time to come to rest, similar case is with dust particles on the Moon. Before we begin this dust particles were formed by frequent collisions of meteors on the surface of the Moon. Now you might be wondering what harm small particles of dust can do to humans. 

Astronauts doing spacewalks or moonwalkers have to perform maneuvers carefully because these dust can scratch their spacesuit and their life would be at risk.

Between the years 1969 and 1972 the Moon missions which were conducted caused a huge amount of dust particles flying around. As the time they spent there more dust got covered on their suits and these dust damaged their gear. This dust is also harmful to the respiratory system, when astronauts return to their craft these dust can get airborne and can cause serious issues.  After research on lunar dust collected from suits of astronauts it was found that along with various mineral oxides it also contained silicon-oxide which resulted in life-threatening lung diseases.

Here are some description of Moon by astronauts who walked on the Moon: 

Apollo 17's Harrison "Jack" Schmitt has said, "All I can say is that everyone's instant impression of the smell was that of spent gunpowder, not that it was 'metallic' or 'acrid.' Spent gunpowder smell probably was much more implanted in our memories than other comparable smells."   

Aldrin remembers that the Lunar dust that soiled suits and equipment during the Apollo 11 mission smelled "like burnt charcoal or similar to the ashes that are in a fireplace, especially if you sprinkle a little water on them."

So as we can see If we have to build a colony or a base on the moon in future then all the equipment will have to be robust and need to be decontaminated frequently. Moon has many minerals under its surface which can be useful to us, we can extract them by mining but it can create a huge debris cloud, so we need to develop equipment that can easily withstand it and does not create such situations. Our Moon base would  need a decontamination chamber which would remove any airborne particles of dust, also the transportation crafts are to be heavily shielded so they cannot be damaged. 

So you see lunar dust is a trouble to future missions, so the coming years are completely dedicated to solving this problem. Separate divisions are set up to focus on the impact of lunar dust on human exploration.