All over the world, there is ongoing research into using the moon as an advanced base for deep space exploration, and Korea is no exception to this effort. The Korea Institute of Civil Engineering and Construction Technology (KICT) has successfully implemented an electrostatic environment that simulates the moon’s surface conditions on Earth rather than in space. Researchers also evaluated its impact and effectiveness.

Among the most serious threats to lunar missions is the Moon’s electrostatically charged surface environment. Because of its extremely thin atmosphere, the Moon is directly exposed to the Sun’s ultraviolet rays, X-rays, solar wind, Earth’s plasma, and more. Therefore, dust clouds on the Moon exhibit strong static electricity. The Moon’s electrostatic environment is positively charged during the day and negatively charged at night.

Since there is almost no atmosphere on the Moon, dust can easily blow away even with minor impacts due to minimal air resistance. Electrostatically charged regolith particles can seriously damage space probes if they become trapped on them.

For example, these particles adhering to photovoltaic cells reduce the efficiency of electricity production. They can damage the spacesuits that protect astronauts on manned missions or enter the respiratory system, causing life-threatening consequences.

Dr. A KICT research team led by Shin Hyosung (along with Senior Researcher Chung Taeil and Dr. Park Seungsoo) developed a chamber designed to simulate the conditions of electrical charge. The goal is to create an electrostatic environment similar to the surface of the moon.

Developed by KICT, the chamber contains ultraviolet lamps, electron beams and plasma generators to positively or negatively charge the surfaces of the examined objects. In the future, this equipment could be used to electrostatically charge a replica of the lunar soil using ultraviolet radiation and electron beams. This will help determine how much material is stuck to the rovers and predict potential problems.

This technology goes beyond simply delivering an electrostatic charge to simulate the Moon’s electrically charged environment under different conditions, such as a daytime or nighttime environment affected by the Earth’s plasma.

The major achievement of this research work is that the developed equipment can quantitatively and independently measure the amount of photoelectric current produced, which has the most significant impact on the lunar dust load during a lunar day. The fact that the error between the experimental measurement obtained in this study and the corresponding theoretical value is around 5% shows the reliability of the developed technology.

Thus, KICT’s efforts were successful not only in recreating a lunar environment in which soil dust remained electrostatically charged, but also in developing an evaluation technology to do so. This research work laid the foundation for equipping a large-scale dirty thermal vacuum chamber (DTVC) with the developed equipment to create an electrostatically charged environment and further evaluate its performance.

The project is directed by Dr. Shin Hyosung said: “Our research demonstrates the possibility of Korea effectively integrating the world’s first full-size DTVC with moon dust charging technology. “This solution will serve as a testbed for a range of future Lunar In-situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) technologies and will address and respond to a number of potential technological challenges posed by electrically charged lunar dust.”