AAAR 32nd Annual Conference
September 30 - October 4, 2013
Oregon Convention Center
Portland, Oregon, USA
Abstract View
Electrostatic Lunar Dust Collection
NIMA AFSHAR-MOHAJER, Chang-Yu Wu, Nicoleta Sorloacia-Hickman, University of Florida
Abstract Number: 87 Working Group: Control Technology
Abstract Levitation and consecutive deposition of the naturally charged particles on the lunar surface were troublesome in previous NASA exploration. Protecting sensitive surfaces from dust deposition in the limiting condition of the lunar atmosphere is imperative for future space exploration. Earlier theoretical and numerical models demonstrated that an electrostatic lunar dust collector (ELDC) is a highly efficient way of particle collection in the vacuum.
In this study, the collection efficiency of an ELDC is investigated experimentally. The experiments were conducted inside a sealed cylindrical chamber connected to the rotary vane vacuum pump (10^-6 torr). A dual-purpose particle charger/dropper was designed and installed on the chamber wall to tribocharge a certain amount of previously sieved 20-µm-sized lunar dust simulants, JSC-1A and Chenobi. The particle charger was remotely controlled by an electric circuit to stop rotating and to start dropping the simulants. The adequate times for saturatedly charging the samples were determined before the ELDC-involved experiments. Connected to a KEITHLEY 6514 electrometer working in nC charge range, a Faraday cup was placed in the bottom of the chamber, and the ELDC stood on top of the Faraday cup. The difference between terrestrial and lunar gravitational acceleration was taken into account by modifying the ELDC dimensions and distances. Each experiment was performed with the ELDC turned off or on. The ELDC collection efficiency was defined based on the difference between the measured total charges of the delivered particles inside the Faraday cup for each paired condition over the total charge in the absence of the ELDC. The obtained results and findings will be presented in the conference.
Keywords: Lunar dust, Particle collection, Electrostatic field