A team from Hawai’i Pacific University (HPU) is developing a new type of moon spacesuit fabric that has the ability to “repel lunar dust on demand.” This innovative fabric, currently in the prototype stage, has received a $50,000 grant from NASA. The main objective of the fabric is to utilize electrostatic forces to keep the corrosive moon dust away, ensuring the protection of spacesuits from damage.
The fabric, known as LiqMEST (Liquid Metal Electrostatic Protective Textile), seeks to address the dust-related challenges faced by NASA’s Apollo astronauts during their missions in the 1960s and 1970s. The sharp lunar dust rapidly degraded surfaces, including rover dust shields, spacesuits, and equipment, making even short expeditions a significant challenge.
NASA plans to send astronauts back to the moon by 2025 or 2026 through its Artemis program. However, this timeline depends on the progress of Artemis 2, which is scheduled for a crewed round-the-moon flight in 2024, as well as the development of the lander and spacesuits for Artemis 3 (the stage that will bring a crew to the lunar surface).
Related: Moon dust could be a problem for future lunar explorers
In addition to repelling dust, HPU’s fabric technology also provides flexibility to astronauts in rugged conditions. However, the primary focus of the material is its repellent properties.
Arif Rahman, an HPU assistant engineering professor who led the grant proposal, explained, “When activated, it generates an electric field that repels lunar dust, preventing the dust from adhering. This strategy can be applied both to spacesuits and fabric covers for lunar equipment during moon missions.”
Rahman intends to use the $50,000 grant from NASA’s Minority University Research and Education Project (MURAP) to build a prototype. If successful, Rahman plans to submit another grant proposal to NASA for further development and eventual use in space missions (subject to NASA’s certification process).
NASA has been studying the lunar dust problem for a significant period, including through initiatives like the Lunar Surface Innovation Initiative established in 2019. Agency officials consider dust mitigation as one of the main challenges that need to be addressed for the long-term viability of astronaut habitats on the moon.
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HPU’s electrostatic technology is not the only fabric being tested. NASA has also conducted space experiments on a fabric variant on the exterior of the International Space Station (ISS) through the Materials International Space Station Experiment (MISSE) project series. These experiments expose materials to challenging orbital conditions, including high radiation and vacuum, for extended periods of time.
A team at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center (KSC) launched an electrodynamic dust shield to the ISS as part of the MISSE-11 project. This was the first test in the series that investigated dust-repelling technology in space. Ground tests prior to the mission indicated that electrodes on glass could remove “more than 98% of dust under high vacuum conditions.” Ongoing analysis is being conducted on the KSC shield, and the results from MISSE-11 and the subsequent mission, MISSE-15, have yet to be published.
