Technologies for Preventing Dust contamination for Lunar Exploration Missions

Title

Technologies for Preventing Dust contamination for Lunar Exploration Missions

Authors

Kavya Manyapu

About the Speaker

Dr. Kavya Manyapu currently works at the Boeing Company as a Flight Crew Operations and Test Engineer for the CST-100 Starliner Commercial Crew Program. She is the Spacesuit integration lead for the Starliner program. She holds a B.S in Aerospace Engineering from Georgia Institute of Technology, Masters from MIT in Aeronautics and Astronautics, and a Ph.D. in Aerospace Sciences from University of North Dakota where she has worked on patent pending spacesuit technologies. Her research is focused on spacesuit and space habitat technologies for planetary exploration. She was the first Ph.D. student of the Space Studies department and has been recently appointed to the Adjunct Faculty staff for the department.

Files

Description

Lunar dust proved to be troublesome during the Apollo missions. The powdery dust got into everything, abrading spacesuit fabric, clogging seals and other critical equipment. Even inside the lunar module, Apollo astronauts were exposed to this dust after they removed their dust coated spacesuits. While efforts are under way to figure out how to return astronauts to the Moon and set up habitats for long duration missions, the issue of lunar dust remains relevant. Consequently, NASA has identified dust as a critical environmental challenge to overcome for future planetary surface missions characterized by dusty environments.

The lecture provides an overview of the various types of spacesuits required for space travel. Several concepts that were successfully investigated by the international research community for preventing deposition of lunar dust on space hardware will be reviewed and novel technologies for preventing spacesuit/space habitat dust contamination for future Lunar and Martian missions will be discussed.

Loading...

Media is loading
 

Publication Date

3-25-2019

City

Grand Forks, ND

Technologies for Preventing Dust contamination for Lunar Exploration Missions

Share

COinS