Don’t Breathe the Moondust
Posted on April 23, 2005
I’ve never thought of this before, but one of the problems with manned exploration of the moon and Mars is that the dust could be dangerous to humans. In fact, previus lunar astronauts had problems with “lunar dust hay fever:”
In 1972, Apollo astronaut Harrison Schmidt sniffed the air in his Lunar Module, the Challenger. “[It] smells like gunpowder in here,” he said. His commander Gene Cernan agreed. “Oh, it does, doesn’t it?”The two astronauts had just returned from a long moonwalk around the Taurus-Littrow valley, near the Sea of Serenity. Dusty footprints marked their entry into the spaceship. That dust became airborne–and smelly.
Later, Schmidt felt congested and complained of “lunar dust hay fever.” His symptoms went away the next day; no harm done. He soon returned to Earth and the anecdote faded into history.
The lunar problem was solely because of the small grain size of the lunar dust, which isn’t actually poisonous per se. Bigger problems will come with Mars, where the heavy metals in the red soil may be toxic. And then theres the dust storms. Link to full story from science@nasa.
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