Sticky Moon dust
JUN 01, 2009
DOI: 10.1063/PT.5.023381
SPACE.com : The first astronauts to walk on the moon in the 1960s and 1970s were inundated by sticky lunar dust that clung to their spacesuits whenever they ventured outside.
Now, four decades later, a self-funded study by an Australian physicist has found a link between the dust’s stickiness and the angle of the sun at the time of each moonwalk.
The new research, which drew on the personal files and paper charts of physicist Brian O’Brien of Perth, suggests that future lunar astronauts may have greater problems with dust adhesion in the middle half of the day than NASA’s Apollo missions faced in the early morning.
© 2009 American Institute of Physics
