NASA is working on how to measure the dust of the moon to help fight air pollution

NASA plans to put humans back to the surface of the moon with an artemis mission. Ahead of the mission, the space agency was working on solutions to various problems that emerged during the apollo mission in the past. One of the biggest challenges for some Apollo mission deals with dust on the surface of the moon. NASA notes that the dust of the moon is not like the type of dust that collects shelves at home worldwide.

Moondust is everywhere, and is very abrasive with the ability to stick to everything. During the Apollo era, NASA designed a special vacancy to clean the dust of the month of the spaces worn by astronauts. The problem is the dust of the moon is very difficult to face so that it damages the vacuum cleaner. Not only the danger of danger for equipment on the moon, is also a danger to astronauts.

NASA’s first step was trying to achieve was to understand how many months dust in the local environment at a certain time, and his efforts to do it paid for a lifetime on earth too. NASA was found during the Apollo era whose astronaut was very sensitive to breathing dust months. NASA said that the filtration system could eliminate many tiny dust particles, but air sensors needed to show that mitigation control at work.

The new air quality sensor is one of the focuses of NASA Space Technologies for the Exploration Partnership Program, known as Nextstep. One specific need specified for the program is a way to measure the dust of the moon in the surface habitat and on the orbiting platform. The company from Denver, Colorado named Lunar Outpost Inc. Develop air quality sensors dubbed Canary Space.

Space Canary has been integrated into an environmental control system and provides different advantages of traditional available equipment. Space Canary is reactivated as Canary-S and meets the need for low quality, wireless air quality and meteorological monitoring on earth. Sensors can measure various pollutants, including particulates, carbon monoxide, methane, sulfur dioxide, and volatile organic compounds, among others. It can make continuous measurements and send messages to Cloud safely every minute, which is transferred to the Lunar Outposts web-based dashboard or customer database for reviews and analysis. This sensor is also very customizable, allowing it to be stacked according to specific use.