Dust Removal Technology Demonstration for a Lunar Habitat

We have developed an Electrodynamic Dust Shield (EDS), an active dust mitigation technology with applications to solar panels, thermal radiators, optical systems, visors, seals and connectors. This active technology is capable of removing dust and granular material with diameters as large as several hundred microns. In this paper, we report on the development of three types of EDS systems for NASA’s Habitat Demonstration Unit (HDU). A transparent EDS 20 cm in diameter with indium tin oxide electrodes on a 0.1 mm-thick polyethylene terephtalate (PET) film was constructed for viewport dust protection. Two opaque EDS systems with copper electrodes on 0.1 mm-thick Kapton were also built to demonstrate dust removal on the doors of the HDU. A lotus coating that minimizes dust adhesion was added to one of the last two EDS systems to demonstrate the effectiveness of the combined systems. I. Introduction NASA is developing a large scale Pressurized Excursion Module (PEM) as part of its Habitat Demonstration Unit (HDU) project. The HDU project seeks to investigate and demonstrate concepts, technologies, and architectures for lunar exploration. The PEM, based on NASA's Constellation Architecture scenario 12.1 concept, is the first habitation prototype to be used for these demonstrations (Figure 1). The HDU project will be conducting its first round of analog tests at NASA's Desert Research and Technology Study (D-RaTS) yearly event in the Arizona desert.