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To quote NASA associate administrator Jim Reuter, sending crewed missions to Mars by 2040 is an “audacious goal.” The challenges include the distance involved, which can take up to six months to traverse using conventional propulsion methods. Then there’s the hazard posed by radiation, which includes increased exposure to solar particles, flares, and galactic cosmic rays .
Much like its lunar counterpart, Martian regolith is expected to be electrostatically charged due to exposure to cosmic radiation. But on Mars, there’s also the contribution made by dust devils and storms, which have been known to generate electrostatic discharges . During the Apollo missions, astronauts reported how the lunar regolith would adhere to their suits and get tracked back into their Lunar Modules.
The principle behind the device, dielectrophoresis , refers to the movement of neutral particles when subjected to a nonuniform electric field. Their proposed Electrostatic Removal System comprises two components: a High Voltage Waveform Generator used to produce square waves of varying frequencies and amplitudes up to 1000 volts and an Electrostatic Removal Device consisting of an array of parallel copper electrodes.
To evaluate the performance of their proposed system, Griggs and Prof. Berthoud developed an experiment to investigate several key variables. This included the frequency and amplitude of square waves, the spacing between the electrodes, the incline of the surface of the ERD, the distance between the electrodes and the dust layer, and the material of the surface from which dust is removed.
From their tests, they found that the system achieved an optimum clearing performance of 98% when integrated directly below a layer of dust particles. However, this dropped off significantly when the outer layer was introduced due to the increased distance between the system and dust particles. As a result, they conclude that this system would likely need to be integrated directly into the outer layer of spacesuits to increase performance, possibly woven into the fabric itself.
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