516: Lunar Dust Glovebox

Controlling lunar dust is a key area of research that helps scientists improve space exploration. Lunar dust is a small, sharp powder that covers the Moon’s surface and can cause serious problems, such as damaging space suits and harming astronauts’ health. Scientists must first understand lunar dust behavior to solve this problem and create hardware resistant to lunar dust. We worked on evenly mixing lunar dust simulant inside a glovebox to study lunar dust behavior. Since real lunar dust is rare, we used a lunar dust simulant.

A glovebox is a sealed container. Researchers use it to evaluate materials in a controlled environment. We built a physical glovebox with five fans and a funnel using design methods. The funnel safely added lunar dust simulant without letting it escape, keeping us safe. We placed fans at key angles and positions to create airflow that helped mix the simulant evenly. 

We used computer modeling to study airflow and dust movement, then built the glovebox and ran two experiments, taking photos throughout. After the first experiment, we compared dust distribution to our model and made adjustments before running the second experiment. Results confirmed even mixing and matched our simulations, supporting NASA and Amentum Space Exploration Group’s research on controlling lunar dust.