Development of an Active Dust Mitigation Technology for Lunar Exploration

The development of efficient dust mitigation solutions is critical for the success of NASA’s lunar exploration efforts. We report on our efforts to develop a Dust Shield, an active dust mitigation technology with applications to solar panels, thermal radiators, optical systems, visors, seals, and connectors. The Dust Shield technology is based on a concept originally developed at NASA in 1967. We also report on the development of several Dust Shield prototypes and on their specific applications. Opaque and rigid Dust Shield prototypes that use metal electrodes embedded in a dielectric substrate have been developed for use in chambers, seals, gates, and mechanical joints. Transparent rigid Dust Shield prototypes that use transparent indium tin oxides (ITO) or carbon nanotubes (CNT) on a transparent substrate have also been developed for use in solar panels, thermal radiators, optical systems, visors, and viewports. Extensive testing of all these prototypes under high vacuum has been performed and on a NASA Reduced Gravity Flight using lunar simulantas and actual Apollo samples. Finally, we also present the results of computer simulations of the Dust Shields. These simulations are compared to experimental results.