Space/Science — HabitableZone

Space/Science » in reply to No walking on the Moon Dust

Even if no one visited to stir up dust there would be a dust problem...
R.L. — (archived)

http://www.firstscience.com/site/articles/moonfountains.asp

The moon has an 'atmosphere' of dust- electrostatically charged dust- dust that clings tight to surfaces.

R.L. has spoken before about how even blowing sharp dust particles off a high-tech optical element can scratch the surface.

well, actually- I believe you are remembering my post on cleaning optics on the summit of mauna kea. I had to find a way to clean the 50 cm projection lens - the lens had a soft AR coating. It wasnt that blowing the dust off scratched it, its that blowing it off did not work, the pumice dust clung to the surface too tightly. After using a high pressure nitrogen gas stream with no success, I squirted various solvents (acetone, ethanol, and de-ionized water) on the surface to wash the dust off, again with no success. I tried the 'drop-and-drag' technique on the unused edge of the lens- (That is laying a lens tissue on the optic and wetting it with ethanol and pulling the tissue across the surface)- that succeeded in removing some dust, but scratched the coating. What finally worked was a product called 'opti-clean'- it is a thick liquid that you gently paint onto the optic, when it dries it forms a plastic like film that you can pull off- and when you pull it off, the dust comes with it.

Even with no wind or air on the moon, dust is going to be an even worse problem... add to that the difficulty in servicing a lunar observatory and quite simply there is no reason to build one- (This does not apply to a radio observatory, just optical observatories)... Look how much time and money is being spent to service the Hubble- its just a few hundred miles away! Orbital observatories make FAR more sense than lunar ones...

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