Electrostatic Technologies for Lunar Dust Mitigation

The damaging impacts of Lunar dust on infrastructure is one of the primary issues prohibiting a long-term presence on the Lunar surface. The adherence of the dust caused severe issues for the Apollo missions, and remain problematic today. Many lunar dust mitigation technologies have been developed, but none have focused on preventing deposition. Methods were developed in this research to prevent lunar dust particles from reaching susceptible surfaces by altering their trajectory through electrostatic repulsion. Laboratory experiments were used to confirm the validity of computer simulations, which were then used to demonstrate the effectiveness of this approach under Lunar conditions.