The toxic side of the Moon
When the Apollo astronauts returned from the surface of the Moon, the dust that clung to their spacesuits made their throats sore and their eyes water. Moon dust is made of sharp, abrasive and nasty particles, but how toxic is it for humans?

The “lunar hay fever”, as NASA astronaut Harrison Schmitt described it during the Apollo 17 mission created symptoms in all 12 people who have stepped on the Moon. From sneezing to nasal congestion, in some cases it took days in some cases for the reactions to fade. Inside the spacecraft, moondust smelt like burnt gunpowder.

The Moon missions left an unanswered question of lunar exploration – one that could affect humanity’s next steps in the Solar System: can lunar dust jeopardise human health when they go to the Moon?

An ambitious ESA research programme with experts from around the planet is now addressing the issues related to moondust.

“We don’t know how bad this dust is. It all comes down to an effort to estimate the degree of risk involved,” says Kim Prisk, a pulmonary physiologist from the University of California with over 20 years of experience in manned spaceflight research – one of the 12 scientists taking part in ESA’s research.

Nasty Dust
Lunar dust has silicate in it, a material common of planetary bodies with volcanic activity. Miners on Earth suffer from inflamed and scarred lungs when inhaling silicate. On the Moon, the dust is so abrasive that it ate away layers of spacesuit boots and destroyed the vacuum seal of the Apollo sample containers.

Fine like powder, but sharp like glass. The low gravity of the Moon, one sixth of what we have on Earth, allows tiny particles to stay suspended for longer and so penetrate more deeply into the lung.

“Particles 50 times smaller than a human hair can hang around for months inside your lungs. The longer the particle stays, the greater the chance for toxic effects,” explains Kim.

Today, the potential damage from inhaling it is still unknown. Recent research shows that lunar soil simulants can destroy lung and brain cells in astronauts under long-term exposure.
https://agupubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/2017GH000125

Down to the particle
On Earth, fine particles tend to smoothen over years of erosion by wind and water, lunar dust however is not round but sharp and spiky.

Added to this, the Moon has no atmosphere and is constantly bombarded by radiation coming from the Sun. The radiation causes the lunar soil to become electrostatically charged.

This charge can be so strong that the dust levitates above the lunar surface, making it even more likely to get inside equipment and people’s lungs.

Dusty workplace
To test equipment and the behaviour of lunar dust, ESA will be working with simulated moondust mined from a volcanic region in Germany.

Working with the simulant is no easy feat. “The rarity of the lunar glass-like material makes it a sexyl kind of dust. We need to grind the source material but that means removing the sharp edges,” says Erin Tranfield, biologist and expert in dust toxicity.

The lunar soil does have a bright side. “You can heat it to produce building bricks that can offer shelter for shield astronauts. Oxygen can be extracted from the soil to sustain human missions on the Moon,” adds Aidan.

This week ESA is hosting a workshop on lunar resources at the European Space Research Technology Centre in the Netherlands, while in space ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst is running a session of the Airway Monitoring experiment to monitor lung health in reduced gravity – preparing for a sustainable return to our nearest neighbour in the Solar System.
http://exploration.esa.int/moon/59878-workshop-towards-the-use-of-lunar-resources/
https://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Human_Spaceflight/Research/Monitoring_the_airways

Credit: ESA


Image:
Lunar agenda
This image of the Moon was taken by ESA astronaut Alexander Gerst from the International Space Station during his Horizons mission. But he’s not the only one to be eyeing the Moon these days.

From 3 to 5 July, ESA is hosting a workshop on lunar exploration at its technical heart in the Netherlands. Building on ESA’s commitment to sustainable exploration, the workshop brings space experts and industry together to talk lunar resources and how to use them to return humanity to the Moon and farther afield.

For humans to live and work on the Moon and beyond, we need oxygen and water for life support as well as fuel and materials to build habitats and equipment. Launching these bulky consumables would cost the kind of money and energy that makes human exploration of the Solar System unsustainable.

Instead, ESA is looking into the capabilities that would allow humans to harness lunar resources for humanity’s sustainable return to the Moon. The approach is known as In-Situ Resource Utilisation. Put simply, it means extracting and processing resources on site to make useful products and services.

Last year, service providers with like-minded ideas were invited to take place in a one-year study exploring what a collaborative and commercially viable mission to the Moon would look like.

During this week’s workshop ESA is continuing this discussion with experts, industry officials, and potential new partners by exploring the technological readiness, commercial viability, legal status, and international context for lunar resource use.

In the meantime, the humans closest to our rocky satellite – astronauts on the International Space Station – are testing technologies such as remotely operating robots to take us a step closer to our next outpost in space.

Credit: Alexander Gerst, ESA

Learn more about ESA’s vision for the next decade of space exploration here and dive into Alexander's Moon gazing during Horizon's mission in this blog post.
https://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Human_Spaceflight/A_new_European_vision_for_space_exploration
http://blogs.esa.int/alexander-gerst/2018/07/02/moon-gazing-from-space/



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