Journal article
Improvement of the electron beam (e-beam) lunar dust mitigation technology with varying the beam incident angle
Acta astronautica, Vol.188, pp.362-366
11/01/2021
DOI: 10.1016/j.actaastro.2021.07.040
Abstract
Dust hazards are considered to be one of the technical challenges for future lunar exploration. In our past work a new dust mitigation technology was introduced utilizing an electron beam to remove dust particles from various surfaces. This technology was developed based on a patched charge model, which shows that the emission and re-absorption of electron beam induced secondary electrons inside microcavities between dust particles can lead to sufficiently large charges on the dust particles, causing their release from the surface due to strong repulsive forces. In this paper an improvement in the effectiveness of this technology is demonstrated with varying the beam incident angle on dust-covered sample surfaces by rotating the samples relative to the beam. Due to random arrangements of the microcavities, more of them will be exposed to the beam with various incident angles, thereby causing more dust release from the surface. The cleaning performance is tested against three samples: glass, spacesuit, and a photovoltaic (PV) panel. Lunar simulant (<25 mu m in diameter) is deposited onto the sample surfaces such that the initial cleanliness of the samples is 0 % (full dust coverage) and 40 %. Varying the beam incident angle shows an overall surface cleanliness increase of 10-20 % in addition to the cleanliness achieved with a fixed beam angle. The ultimate cleanliness reaches 83-92 % for the glass and spacesuit samples. The PV panel coated with MgF2 is shown to be more adhesive to the dust with the maximum cleanliness of 50-63 %.
Details
- Title: Subtitle
- Improvement of the electron beam (e-beam) lunar dust mitigation technology with varying the beam incident angle
- Creators
- B. Farr - Univ Colorado, Lab Atmospher & Space Phys, Boulder, CO 80303 USAX. Wang - Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space PhysicsJ. Goree - University of IowaI Hahn - California Institute of TechnologyU. Israelsson - California Institute of TechnologyM. Horanyi - University of Colorado Boulder
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Publication Details
- Acta astronautica, Vol.188, pp.362-366
- Publisher
- Elsevier
- DOI
- 10.1016/j.actaastro.2021.07.040
- ISSN
- 0094-5765
- eISSN
- 1879-2030
- Number of pages
- 5
- Grant note
- NASA/SSERVI's Institute for Modeling Plasma, Atmospheres and Cosmic Dust (IMPACT) Game Changing Development Dust Mitigation project Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology NASA/BPS
- Language
- English
- Date published
- 11/01/2021
- Academic Unit
- Physics and Astronomy; Mechanical Engineering
- Record Identifier
- 9984429017502771
Metrics
1 Record Views