How Barbie is helping space exploration in one of its great challenges: dealing with moon dust

If you visit the laboratories of the Washington State University (WSU) you may find a Barbie doll clad in a space suit, Kevlar jumpsuit and helmet included. She hasn’t been forgotten by the son of one of the scientists, nor is she part of any in-joke at the Hydrogen Properties and Energy Research Laboratory (Hyper), where you’ll probably see her. No. If he’s there, it’s to help us with an important mission, in fact one of the most important that NASA has at hand: set foot on the Moon again and, eventually, establish settlements there that will help us get to Mars.

Her name is Rosie. And so far she has not done anything wrong.

Barbie to the space rescue? Exact. If something characterizes the very famous Mattel doll, relaunched to the highest peaks of fame – if she ever abandoned them – with the Greta Gerwig film, it is her enormous versatility. There is an executive Barbie, a medical Barbie, an explorer, a reporter, a singer… and of course an astronaut Barbie. In it hyper laboratory from Washington State University (WSU) have wanted, however, to take this last concept a step further and use one of Mattel’s popular figures for that very thing: to advance space exploration in general and lunar exploration in particular.

The doll in different phases of the experiment: covered in particles (left), after vacuum treatment (middle), and after vacuum treatment and another localized with a hand sprayer (right).

But… and how? Well, looking for solutions to one of the great challenges that astronauts face when they step on the Moon: prevent the regolith that covers its surface from ruining their suits, scratching their lenses, clogging equipment and even affecting their health. That challenge was grappled with decades ago by Neil Armstrong, harrison schmitt and the rest of the cosmonauts Apollo Program. And that same challenge will now have to be faced by the crew returning to the satellite as part of Artemis.

Hence, at Washington State University, a team of scientists has sought the best way to get rid of annoying selenic dust. And to achieve this they have decided to use a peculiar “guinea pig”: a Barbie doll.

And what exactly has he done? To understand it, you have to go back several years, when the National Aerospace Institute of the USA launched the Big Idea Challenge 2021, a call that challenged university students to “design, build, and test dust mitigation technologies that could be used for lunar applications.” The researchers from the WSU Hyper laboratory picked up the gauntlet and decided to bet on a line of work that is as curious as it is promising: the possibilities offered by the liquid nitrogen astronauts to get rid of the annoying specks that cover the satellite.

“After pouring an excess of liquid nitrogen on the ground after conducting experiments, the students noticed the lack of dust and dirt in the places where the cryogenic liquid accumulated,” report from the WSU. It was one of his students, Ian Wells, then in the second year, who realized that this phenomenon could perhaps have applications with the lunar regolith.

Why is it interesting for NASA? Wells then decided to investigate what is known as Leidenfrost effect, a term that may sound very technical but actually refers to a phenomenon that we have all seen when pouring cold water on a pan. “Describe how a liquid that touches a hot surface slides on its own vapor before evaporating completely,” apostille the WSU, which also slides one of its most interesting practical uses: “Collect any particle in its path”. Convinced of its possibilities, the team developed a proposal that competed with 54 others and ended up awarded by NASA.

“At work the team demonstrated their technology that uses the Leidenfrost effect to clean spacesuits —clarify from the institution, based in Washington. If very cold liquid nitrogen is sprayed onto a hot, dust-covered material, the particles collect and float in the nitrogen vapor.”

Okay, but what does Barbie fit into all this? A lot. As much as the idea of ​​Wells and his colleagues looked great on paper, it was necessary to translate it into practice, even if that initially happened by resorting to a plastic guinea pig. That’s where Barbie comes into the picture. To test the real scope of her proposal, the WSU team got hold of a doll: they dressed her in a 1/6 scale Kevlar Nomex suit and then smeared her with ashes from the Mount St. Helensa material that scientists chose for its similarities to lunar regolith.

When the intrepid Barbie was sufficiently smeared with particles, she was placed in a vacuum chamber and sprayed with a manual cryotherapy bottle. And not in any way. The treatment was applied with 360º. The peculiar cosmonaut, by the way, was baptized “Rosie” in honor of Rosie the Riveter, although there were more ideas on the table. “Personally, I wanted to call her Barb, after Barbie, but also after one of my personal idols, Barbara Morgan, who is an astronaut from my home state of Idaho,” explains Wells to BBC Future.

Which it was the result? The process is somewhat more complex and required the team to study how nitrogen droplets behave when subjected to different gravitational conditions, but their results are surprising. Under normal atmospheric conditions, the 95% of the dust and in the vacuum chamber 98%. It is not a minor matter, since, as they remember in Hyperspace suits, even if it is a tiny one designed and knitted for a doll a few centimeters tall, are full of folds and wrinkles that offer ideal recesses for lunar dust.

And did not spoil the space suit? The researchers say no. In fact, they claim that the damage suffered by the monkeys was “minima” and the performance greater than that of the rest of the techniques that are usually used. While brush cleaning leaves damage to material as early as the first pass, the liquid nitrogen spray used by Wells and his colleagues completed 75 cycles before it caused any damage. until His conclusions have been embodied in an article published in May in the magazine Astronautical Act. In February the team was still investigating “the complex interactions” between the particles and nitrogen.

Is it so important to remove moon dust? Yes. It may seem like a minor problem, but lunar dust is a serious problem for lunar exploration. Both for how it affects the astronauts’ suits and apparatus and for its impact on their own health. “It’s electrostatically charged, abrasive and gets everywhere, making it a very difficult substance to handle,” remember wells: “You end up with a thin layer of dust covering everything.”

It is not a theoretical question. The astronaut Schmitt suffered for example what is known as “lunar hay fever” after a walk through the Taurus-Littrow valley, near the Sea of ​​​​Serenity. “The real problem is the lungs”, explains Russell KerschmannNASA pathologist: “In some ways, it resembles silica dust on Earth, which causes silicosis, a serious disease.”

Images: WSU-Hyper, POT and WSU

Via: BBC

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