1/21/2024 0 Comments Space exploration budgetWith future plans to travel to the Moon again already in progress, the need for a novel cleaning technique to prevent damage to spacesuits and astronauts is clear. "If there's enough dust on the seals, or enough abrasion occurs, then those seals won't sit properly… you'll either have a leak or it won't seal at all," Wells later told BBC Future.īeyond damage to the suits, lunar dust can cause serious damage to the lungs if inhaled, with Wells comparing it to "breathing ground-up fibreglass". These "annoyingly clingy" microscopic particles statically stick to the spacesuits of astronauts and are difficult to clean off.ĭuring the Apollo missions, astronauts were unable to remove the dust using standard brushes, resulting in damage to the seals on their spacesuits. Why is lunar dust a problem? Moon dust is "ubiquitous, abrasive and electrically charged", according to Ian Wells, a graduate researcher at Washington State University, who was speaking to the BBC World Service programme Unexpected Elements. They found this technique is more effective than previous cleaning methods. Wearing a tailor-made spacesuit, Barbie was coated in volcanic ash by a team from Washington State University and sprayed with liquid nitrogen. In recent experiments, scientists used the dolls to test methods of removing Moon dust from spacesuits. Now Barbie has been helping space exploration for real. In the 1960s, Astronaut Barbie was transporting children on space adventures even before Nasa's own astronauts had taken their first steps on the Moon and 13 years before Nasa began accepting female astronauts into their programme. One of her most famous is as a space explorer.
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