WHEN it comes to keeping moon dust at bay, nothing beats a little sunshine.
So says a NASA team studying methods to protect a future moon base from the fine powder on the lunar surface. The dust is easily disturbed and highly abrasive. It could damage equipment and, if it gets into inhabited areas, astronauts鈥� lungs.
The answer, says study leader Paul Hintze of the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, is a 1-metre-wide lens that focuses sunlight to melt and fuse the dust. In tests on Earth, a solar concentrator heated the soil to 1350 掳C, forming a solid crust 6 millimetres deep within 3 minutes.
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The team say the technique could be used to create landing and launch pads for spacecraft as well as roads for lunar vehicles, to cut down the amount of dust kicked up.
