Academics & Research

UH dusts off moon for data

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UH researchers are harvesting lunar dust to aid in NASA’s Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer endeavor. |Wikimedia Commons/The Daily Cougar

The University is joining in the national effort to collect detailed information about the moon.

NASA’s Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) was launched into space on Sept. 6 and will orbit the moon for 100 days to gather data that could potentially answer many long-standing questions that boggle the scientific community.

Questions about its surface boundary exosphere — a thin, atmospheric layer prevalent in this solar system — lunar dust and surface conditions, like composition and global density, have yet to be fully answered.

Alex Ignatiev, the director of the Center for Advanced Materials and a Hugh Roy and Lillie Cranz Cullen Distinguished Professor of Physics, is working on a project with his team to harvest lunar dust for the creation of solar cells. This In-Situ Resource Utilization project would create energy and fuel in space to further research and, eventually, drive down costs of deep space exploration.

“Little is known about lunar dust in the lunar atmosphere, both from the scientific viewpoint and from the technological viewpoint, as the dust will affect everything that will be done on the moon in the future,” Ignatiev said. “The LADEE mission is, to me, a sign of a return of NASA’s interest in the moon, and (it) will support the (research and development) efforts — both of NASA Johnson Space Center scientists interested in properties of the moon and the lunar dust and of UH researchers interested in using and living on the moon.”

Rabi Ebrahim also works as a research scientist at the Center for Advanced Materials, where he has done tests on the presence of water on the moon, its extraction and what this could mean for future research and the LADEE mission.

“The presence of water will support life on the moon in many ways, and it could be used as a source of power — hydrogen and oxygen could be used to run oxide fuel cells. On the other hand, because of the high silicon content in the moon soil, scientists dream of building solar panels directly on the lunar soil,” Ebrahim said.

“The LADEE mission will add more information about the moon and its soil, which may support the space sciences, and scientists may be able to use the moon soil and the ultra-high vacuum to build better electronics and nano-sciences.”

Though this mission will advance the sciences as a whole, the LADEE spacecraft itself has created some buzz in the space community. It is the first spacecraft that isn’t custom-built, which can cut the price tag for future space exploration.

“The Modular Common Spacecraft Bus, or body, is an innovative way of transitioning away from custom designs and toward multi-use designs and assembly line production, which could drastically reduce the cost of spacecraft development, just as the Ford Model T did for automobiles,” according to NASA’s website.

But the United States isn’t the only country to use technology to study the moon. Russia, Japan and, recently, India have made their mark with unmanned, soft-lander missions. China plans to launch its first lunar soft-lander mission, Chang’e 3, on Dec. 1.

“The moon is the stepping stone to man’s future migration into space,” Ignatiev said, “and we should have maximum knowledge of the moon if we are to use it effectively.”

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