About This Project

One of the most dangerous aspects of Lunar and Martian exploration is having to deal with the abrasive dust, known as regolith. Our research hopes to reduce some of the harmful effects of regolith on astronauts and robotic explorers by seeing how the dust reacts when different cones impact a lunar dust bed in microgravity. We will perform our experiment through the NASA Microgravity University aboard the ZeroG Vomit Comet.

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What is the context of this research?

Lunar regolith has proved a problem for past Lunar missions, notably
the Apollo missions, and will continue to be a concern in the future. The characteristics of regolith, including its extreme abrasiveness and electrostatic properties make Lunar operations a challenge. Because of the scarcity of collected Lunar regolith and the unique environment that must be created to represent Lunar conditions, Lunar dust behavior and characteristics are not yet fully understood.

By better understanding Lunar regolith characteristics, dust mitigation strategies and techniques can be focused to address the true obstacles. Our experiment aims to qualitatively and quantitatively explore the impact reaction of regolith in response to varying impact geometries. A pneumatic cylinder (with attached impact geometries) will provide an impact force to a bed of Lunar regolith simulant, with the resulting ejecta characteristics including size, density, direction, and velocity being recorded. Many of the related experiments in the past have used spheres as the impact geometry, but none have explored conical geometries. We will be using 3 different conical geometries at different tip angles: 45, 60, and 120 degree tips.

To simulate the environment, we will run the experiment inside a vacuum chamber and will run it in a zero gravity environment aboard the NASA Vomit Comet at Johnson Space Center. We a one of only 18 teams who will participate in the 2014 NASA Microgravity University.

What is the significance of this project?

If the resulting relationship between ejecta and impact geometry can be
successfully characterized, potentially expensive dust mitigation techniques can be tailored to areas around the astronaut or robotic explorer that are expected to encounter more detrimental dust ejecta, e.g., high velocity or denser particulate. The result would help organizations like NASA understand the characteristics of lunar dust better and help design equipment that have a drastically extended life. This can potentially decrease both the cost and weight future exploration activities as design can be done on Earth before bringing it to the Moon or Mars.

What are the goals of the project?

We are hoping to get two data sets:

1. Density of the ejected dust
2. Velocity and trajectory of the dust

We are collecting velocity and trajectory data using a technique called Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) that involves lasers and an HD camera that will allow us to analyze the movement of the regolith after an impact which can help us isolate areas that a large amount of regolith will end up. We will collect density data using a grid of infrared emitters and detectors that will allow us to map the relative density of the regolith plume.

Once the data has been recorded, we will be using Matlab and Image Processing programs that will analyze the video we collect and map the densities of different areas of the ejecta plume over time. Our experimental setup is made specifically for PIV and we have consulted fluid dynamic graduate students who have helped verify our designs. After the flight week (May 30 – June 7) we expect about a month or two to analyze all of the flight data and compress it into a concise statement of what geometry worked best (least regolith ejecta) and what areas around the impact site are most likely to have the highest concentration of regolith.