Don’t fuck with moon dust. No seriously, do not fuck with moon dust.
Absent any moisture or atmosphere, millennia of asteroid impacts have turned lunar regolith (soil) into a fine powder of razor sharp, glass-like particles. What’s more, the solar wind imparts an electric charge on the dust, causing it to cling to any and every surface it touches through static electricity. On earth, sand tends to get smoother over time as wind and water tumble the grains about, eroding their sharpness. Not so on the moon – lunar dust is sharp and deadly. This is Not A Good Time if you’re an explorer looking to visit our celestial neighbor.
During Apollo, the astronauts faced a plethora of unexpected issues caused by dust. It clung to spacesuits and darkened them enough that exposure to sunlight overheated the life support systems. Dust got in suit joints and on suit visors, damaging them. It ate away layers of boot lining. It covered cameras. Upon returning to the cabin, astronauts attempting to brush it off damaged their suit fabric a
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Don’t fuck with moon dust. No seriously, do not fuck with moon dust.
Absent any moisture or atmosphere, millennia of asteroid impacts have turned lunar regolith (soil) into a fine powder of razor sharp, glass-like particles. What’s more, the solar wind imparts an electric charge on the dust, causing it to cling to any and every surface it touches through static electricity. On earth, sand tends to get smoother over time as wind and water tumble the grains about, eroding their sharpness. Not so on the moon – lunar dust is sharp and deadly. This is Not A Good Time if you’re an explorer looking to visit our celestial neighbor.
During Apollo, the astronauts faced a plethora of unexpected issues caused by dust. It clung to spacesuits and darkened them enough that exposure to sunlight overheated the life support systems. Dust got in suit joints and on suit visors, damaging them. It ate away layers of boot lining. It covered cameras. Upon returning to the cabin, astronauts attempting to brush it off damaged their suit fabric and sent the dust airborne, where it remained suspended in the air due to low gravity.
Inhaling moon dust causes mucus membranes to swell; every Apollo astronaut who stepped foot on the moon reported symptoms of “Lunar Hay Fever.” Sneezing, congestion, and a “smell of burnt gunpowder” took days to subside. Later Apollo missions even sent a special dust brush with the team to help clean each other and equipment. We don’t know exactly how dangerous the stuff is, but lunar regolith simulants suggest it might destroy lung and brain cells with long-term exposure. 1 In fact the dust is so nasty that it destroyed the vacuum seals of sample return containers. We no longer have any accurate samples of lunar dust, “Every sample brought back from the moon has been contaminated by Earth’s air and humidity […] The chemical and electrostatic properties of the soil no longer match what future astronauts will encounter on the moon.” 2 Whats worse, the solar-charged dust gets thrown up off the moon’s surface via electrostatic forces. The moon doesn’t technically have an atmosphere, but it does have a thin cloud of sharp dust itching to cling to anything it can find.
And it probably isn’t just the moon. “A 2005 NASA study listed 20 risks that required further study before humans should commit to a human Mars expedition, and ranked "dust" as the number one challenge.” 3 The coolest solution I’ve heard about in next-gen spacesuit design is a mesh of woven wires layered into the suit. When activated, the wire mesh would form an anti-static electric field that repels dust. Quite literally a force field. 4 #astronomy #apollo #moon #lunardust
"Map of the solar neighbourhood 800 parsecs (2020)."
Kevin Jardine at galaxymap.org. Data from the GAIA mission by ESA and DPAC (Gaia Data Processing and Analysis Consortium). Milky Way map used with creative commons permission by Stefan Payne-Wardenaar., CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.
The most powerful events in the known universe – gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) – are short-lived outbursts of the highest-energy light. They can erupt with a quintillion (a 10 followed by 18 zeros) times the luminosity of our Sun.
Wow! I've been a long time subscriber to Astronomy Picture of the Day and they are all amazing.
I must have become a little jaded though, because today's really made me stop, drop everything and take some time to appreciate it.
Follow the link to the NASA description - it tells a short but fascinating story of how and where the shot was taken.
I immediately had to get on Google Earth to find the locations so that I could see it all for myself! Thanks to Valerio Monato for the dedication required to get the shot.
#Space tip: if you’re ever lost in the inner #solar system, you can just type out the phrase “Optimistic #Aliens measure space typographically” in times new roman and use the dots as a #map
It would appear that a distant star has sprung back to life after its explosive death, blasting out repeated energetic flares over a period of several months that are like nothing astronomers have seen before.
"No one really knew what to say. We had never seen anything like that before — something so fast, and the brightness as strong as the original explosion months later."
My 1st cover story! For New Scientist about experiments that are close to telling us if spacetime is quantized. And a Q&A with a physicist who is simulating space-time from scratch!
Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin's 1925 thesis that the sun was composed mostly of hydrogen and helium was rejected by a professor who called it "impossible". Years later, the man who rejected it realized she was in fact right, but he was credited with the discovery for decades. A prominent astronomer called her discovery "the most brilliant PhD thesis ever written in #astronomy". #WomenInScience
It's impossible to keep up with the rate of progress in the Sciences (as with the rest of society) nowadays. Judging by video this is a southern hemisphere location and so it turns out - Namibia. But if I'd heard of this project in 2004 - I'd long forgotten it. Fascinating.
A compilation of some of my latest real colour astrophotos from 2022-2023Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!):https://uppbeat.io/t/soundroll/flawlessLice...
The University of Colorado Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) is hiring software engineers for science data processing on the Data Systems team. We build satellite borne instruments for studying astrophysics, planetary science, earth science, atmospheric science, and many more disciplines. Data Systems typically does the ground processing of the instrument data from binary packets through to research quality science data products (think netCDF, HDF5, CDF, FITS files). Mostly we use Python but we have some Java systems and C experience is always a plus for making Python faster.
Access to DiRAC is co-ordinated by The STFC's DiRAC Resource Allocation Committee, which puts out an annual Call for Proposals to request time, a Director's
NASA Plus is a new subscription-free streaming service that will have original shows, mission archives, livestreams for Artemis II, and more. It will launch later this year on iOS, Android, Apple TV, and on NASA’s new beta website.
Our universe is rippling with waves caused by massive events, such as merging black holes. Up until yesterday, we didn’t have any evidence of long-wavelength, ‘background’ #GravitationalWaves. But now @nanograv has announced a detection! A network of pulsars measured very carefully has revealed a faint hum in spacetime itself. Though luckily you don’t need pulsars to detect these cookies, a mouth works just fine 😉
Another shot from one of my SOFIA flights. This was 22nd July 2019, shot thousands of Km south of NZ. I was lucky enough to be in the flight deck as we flew beneath an auroral substorm. Apols for the low quality but this was hand held! #aurora #Auroraaustralis #astronomy
The Royal Astronomical Society (RAS) has today announced that all journals published by the Society will be Open Access (OA) from January 2024. This move
will enable...
About two billion light-years away, a whole cluster of galaxies known as Abell 68 shines.
The massive gravitational field of Abell 68 is strong enough to bend the light paths of more distant galaxies, causing the warped shapes of some galaxies seen here: https://go.nasa.gov/442N3e1 #Hubble
Happy that the first exoplanet discovered accidentally by Dale Frail and Aleksander Wolszczan in 1992 is included. They were not even mentioned when other #astronomers were awarded the Nobel prize for the discovery of exoplanets. And yet the discovery ended up showing exoplanets can show up in strange places.
Today marks the day I learnt that you can hear meteors, which explains why amateur radio and #radio astronomy communities united to create what's called GB3MBA: Meteor Beacon for #Astronomy.
Using the "Our Galaxy" app, we show where the globular cluster NGC 6355 is located in our galaxy. The cluster is deeply embedded in the galactic bulge and is heavily obscured from our point of view. We turn on a wire frame rendering of the bulge so the cluster can be better seen.
Using the "Our Galaxy" app, we show where the globular cluster NGC 6355 is located in our galaxy. The cluster is deeply embedded in the galactic bulge and i...
We (myself included) have taken this for granted for 50 years. But … Damn, we built rockets, spaceships, protective suits, & all the comm/control systems to make it work, … and then sent people to the MOON! And back! And we did all that with the primitive computing capabilities available back then … 🤦♂️
#CarlSagan was a hero of mine In the 70s I lived on a large commune in the hills near NASA Ames. One of us worked there under Dr Sagan making a stereo map of Mars from Mariner 9 photos
Never one to turn down an audience he brought his slideshow (the bones of Cosmos) up the mountain and gave 150 hippies a tour of the Universe projected on a pair of white sheets!
I thought that as an intro, I can list my most recent article, published in Quanta Magazine!
Fav quote: “There are galaxies that we haven’t discovered that are very big, very close by, and have unusual properties, and they are not in our current catalogs even after all these decades of studying the sky.”
Time for another #introduction for the newcomers 😀 I'm an astronomer and science communicator at the European Southern Observatory.
In my previous life I used to study how galaxies form and evolve. I also helped my peers get their data as a support astronomer at ESO's Paranal Observatory in Chile. I now work full time as Media Officer at ESO's HQ in Germany.
I'm also an avid astrophotographer! Below is a pic of my previous "office" in Chile. 🤩
"Now Witness the Firepower of this fully Armed and Operational Telescope." - Astronomer Palpatine. 🙂
"Alignment of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is now complete. After full review, the observatory has been confirmed to be capable of capturing crisp, well-focused images with each of its four powerful onboard science instruments."
Lecture by Sir Fred Hoyle to the Sri Lanka Institute of Fundamental Studies, December 1982, "From Virus to Cosmology", on the theory of cometary panspermia
