The moon is set to be our next frontier. When Artemis 3 takes off (tentatively) near the end of 2025, it will be the first mission to land humans on a satellite since the Apollo era. By then, new methods of navigating the moon’s gray dust may be established, at least reducing the damage caused by sharp particles in the moon’s regolith.
ESA’s international team of researchers pavers The project has discovered a way to melt moondust, or at least the ESA-developed irritant, with a laser. Researchers have created an articulated paver that can be used to build roads and landing pads by shining laser beams on lunar soil. Hardened molten regolith would be strong enough to withstand the weight of rovers and other spacecraft while minimizing dust kick-up, and could all be manufactured directly on the lunar surface.
“This technology is envisioned to play a key role in the first stage (survivability) of lunar infrastructure and base development, and over time to contribute to all stages of lunar exploration,” researchers said. stated in a recently published study. scientific report.
damage the surface
There’s a reason moon dust has been a problem for lunar explorers and astronauts. On Earth, sand grains often have smooth edges because rocks, glass, and other materials in soil are constantly exposed to weathering effects such as wind, rain, and running water. The Moon’s regolith weathers very little due to the lack of wind and liquid water. Unweathered rock and glass shards can easily scratch sensitive equipment and abrade surfaces, so spacecraft landing on or crossing the moon are often forced to wind up. At risk from dust. The moon’s low gravity also means that turbulent debris continues to fly around and get into everything.
PAVER scientists wanted to devise a way to create paving material from resources already available on the Moon. Transporting goods from Earth is expensive and inconvenient, so on site Production is preferred whenever possible.
The main difference between these simulation experiments (aside from simulating regolith) is that CO2 Instead of the concentrated sunlight used by astronauts on the moon, lasers were used to heat the material.
stepping stones
To find the laser beam that produced the most powerful paving material, laser beams of various sizes and intensities had to be tested. During this process, the research team discovered that crossing or overlapping laser beams could cause internal cracks. moon regolith It contains a lot of glass and other silicates. The laser that proved to be the most effective, eventually he had a 45 mm (about 1.8 inch) beam and was able to move over the dust in a specific pattern that created a triangular shape. . This dissolved the regolith simulant into 250 mm (nearly 10 inches) and 15 mm (just over half an inch) thick pieces that could easily interlock with each other. Of course, these would need to be scaled up to accommodate actual spacecraft for actual lunar surface operations.
The irradiated and cooled regolith had three distinct layers. The top layer, which is a type of glass, and the middle layer of crystallized material were both melted. The thin layer of material at the bottom is not molten, but sintered, meaning it’s dust stuck together into a porous mass. Although the material is dense and strong enough on its own, the geometry designed by scientists is intended to maximize its flexibility and resistance to cracking and breakage. did.
To see if the triangle could withstand the weight of the spacecraft, a compression test was conducted to see how much pressure the triangle could withstand before breaking, with a maximum value of 216.29 megapascals (per square inch). (just over £30,000). For comparison, the Apollo Lunar Module weighed 33,000 pounds, and that weight was spread over a much larger area than one inch.
Scientists acknowledge that there is still progress to be made in this research. Lenses that concentrate sunlight are an alternative to lasers on the moon and should be tested. Still, these tests are worth pursuing because only a few lightweight instruments are needed to carry out this process on the Moon. It might even be possible to get them in time for the first boots since Apollo 17 to walk on the moon again.
Scientific Reports, 2023. DOI: 10.1038/s41598-023-42008-1
