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Dust poses a real challenge for future crewed and robotic exploration missions.
Apart from potentially compromising astronauts’ health by inhalation and irritation of respiratory systems, lunar dust has many other hazardous potential effects, e.g. spacesuit tearing, external vision obscuration, false instrument readings, dust coating and contamination, loss of traction, clogging of mechanisms, abrasion, thermal control problems (overheated radiators) and seal failures.
The DUSTER project
Therefore, it is of utmost importance to characterise the properties of the dust particles present on the exploration sites and their transportation mechanisms to enable efficient mitigation techniques to be put in place. To this end, in the frame of the DUSTER project, a three-sensor breadboard instrument is under development.
This instrument comprises:
- a Langmuir probe to measure the plasma parameters at the lunar surface,
- a DC electric field (E-field) sensor to infer the level of charging of the dust layer, and
- an active Dust sensor to attract dust particles while measuring their charge, speed and mass.
The front-ends and the high voltage power supply (up to 5 kV) together with the E-Field sensor and Langmuir probe have been developed at BIRA-IASB.
The digital and processing unit (DPU), the low voltage power supply and the software have been developed by IAA-CSIC (Granada, Spain). The development of the active Dust probe and the tests in a representative environment in the laboratory have been carried out by ONERA (Toulouse, France).
More information can be found on the DUSTER website:
Electronics front-ends
Each sensor has a dedicated front-end to measure its signal and send it to the DPU.
- The Langmuir probe front-end allows measuring extremely faint currents while sweeping the potential of the probe from -100 V up to +100 V.
- The Dust front end measures the tiny current carried by the charged dust particles while biasing the probe at high potential (up to 5 kV).
- The E-Field front-end allows measuring the DC electric field.
The DUSTER Langmuir probe
The Langmuir probe, which has been manufactured at BIRA-IASB, is made of an 80 mm diameter aluminium sphere with an 80 mm guard below it to mitigate the effects of the boom on the electrical environment of the probe. Two models have been manufactured.
One model is coated with gold and the second one is coated with DAG213, a graphite-filled epoxy coating. A comparison of the performance of the probes will be carried out during the tests in the plasma chamber at ONERA.
