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Monday, 2 December 2013

As NASA's new lunar orbiter, LADEE, prepares to scour the Moon's atmosphere and China readies its Chang'e rover to land on the Moon by the end of the year, a physicist from The University of Western Australia has made new discoveries about lunar dust using data obtained from matchbox-sized instruments placed on the Moon during the first four Apollo landings.

UWA Adjunct Professor Brian O'Brien's analyses of the 40-year-old data mean that for the first time, scientists can now tell how quickly damaging lunar dust accumulates on critical scientific experiments - up to 1mm in 1000 years.

"For a future lunar lander, for example, there is now a targeted limit to acceptable long-term dust contamination of important operational instruments, such as the Lunar Laser Ranging Experiments on the Moon, which are continually refining more precise upper limits to the stability of the universal law of gravity the longer they can stay clean," Professor O'Brien said.

Professor O'Brien invented his 270g Dust Detector Experiments (DDEs) in 1966 as risk-management devices to measure lunar dust impact on another briefcase-sized experiment he'd devised - itself one of the original seven primary experiments chosen for use in the Apollo missions.

The DDEs were designed to measure what became the bane of the Apollo astronauts' existence: powdery, sticky, abrasive lunar dust which clung to and damaged everything it touched including seals, solar panels, space suits and the scientific instruments designed to learn more about the Moon.

Professor O'Brien described lunar dust particles as the greatest source of environmental problems and hazards for astronauts, due to their very fine and abrasive nature.

The dust, now known to be toxic, caused many Apollo experiments to overheat.  Professor O'Brien's latest analysis, conducted with UWA Physics and Engineering graduate Monique Hollick and published in the American Geophysical Union publication Space Weather , is the first long-term direct measurement of dust accretion at three Apollo landing sites on the Moon.

It is also the first measurement by bare and covered solar cells on the surface of the Moon of the anomalously intense August 1972 Solar Particle Event which occurred between the Apollo 16 and 17 missions; and the first comparison of solar cell damage by radiation and lunar dust on the Moon.

The analyses showed that the dust was accumulating faster than geological predictions.

"It also showed that long-term net dust accretion could cause more damage to solar cell power supplies of an establishment on the Moon than even the most intense solar outburst of penetrating radiation which would threaten astronauts," Professor O'Brien said.

The findings link together two significant eras in lunar exploration - the first landings on the Moon more than four decades ago, and the recent lunar renaissance represented by NASA's September-launched Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE); and the anticipated landing of China's lunar rover, Chang'e, on the Moon by the end of the year.

Media references

Adjunct Professor Brian O'Brien (UWA School of Physics)  (+61 8)  9387 3827
Monique Hollick (+61 4) 08 392 401
UWA Public Affairs Media Team  (+61 8)  6488 7977  /  (+61 4) 32 637 716

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