Assessment of methods and strategies for lunar dust mitigation experiments within a low-fidelity test environment

Abstract Lunar regolith is identified as one of the greatest challenges for future lunar surface missions. With a rising number of planned surface exploration missions within the next decades, the significance of technologically robust, dust-tolerant solutions and lunar dust mitigation strategies have never been more present. Within this context, the University of Stuttgart’s Institute of Space System is investigating technical solutions and methods for active and passive dust mitigation strategies. A low-fidelity test environment was set up in order to provide the ability to characterise adhesion forces and abrasive effects of lunar simulant particles on multiple technical surfaces. Microscopic imaging is used in order to quantify remaining particle depositions after several experiment series. The test campaigns presented in this paper include three specific experiments: dust particle adhesion characterisation on a specific surface type by centripetal force measurements (1), dust-surface cleaning and abrasion tests with varying types of brushes (2), as well as magnetic cleaning methods (3). A developed optical particle detection algorithm is being used in situ to the experiment to resource efficiently specify the amount and size of remaining particles to derive data on the respective adhesiveness. The low-fidelity test environment is seen as a very efficient solution for first precursor tests and experiment series with varying boundary conditions. The control and variation of sample surface substrates, lunar analogue types, grain sizes, and some environmental conditions allow a high variation of different testing scenarios in order to characterise first impact factor dependencies. This paper describes the general setup of the developed test environment, the specific experiments, methods and results, as well as the lessons learned.