Astronauts of the future may not need to dust off their spacesuits. Engineers at Boeing are designing self-cleaning versions based on carbon nanotube technology.
“Spacesuits are one of the first things that come to your mind when you think about human space exploration,” says Kavya Manyapu, a Flight Crew Operations and Test Engineer for Starliner Spacecraft at Boeing. But existing spacesuits are not ideally suited for working on the surface of the moon or Mars.
Dust was a big problem for astronauts on the various NASA Apollo missions. It’s charged with static electricity from UV radiation and solar wind, and can quickly become a sticky nuisance, clogging up sensors and blackening out the white parts, causing an upset to the suit’s thermal balance.
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Since the moon essentially lacks an atmosphere, lunar dust particles . They remain sharp and abrasive. This means the space suits experience a high rate of wear and tear from the dust, which gets stuck in the joints and other parts that rub together. Abrasive dust is a problem on Mars too, although given that the , dust there is not quite as abrasive as on the Moon.
Manyapu and her colleagues are developing spacesuits made with carbon nanotube technology which works as a dust repellent. The self-cleaning suits could serve astronauts travelling to the moon or even to dusty Mars on long-term missions.
The technology isn’t totally new. NASA has been working with a carbon nanotube material to keep lunar dust from clogging up solar panels. The trouble is this material is brittle and flat – Manyapu’s challenge was to try to make a version that was elastic, flexible and wearable.
She and her colleagues turned to flexible carbon nanotube fibres, creating a knee joint section pressurised to maintain oxygen inside as it would be in space to test with Martian and lunar dust simulations. The trick is that the carbon nanotubes are energised with an electric field, which means they repel dust from the suit through a process called .
Essentially, it’s the opposite of a static-filled sweater which everything sticks to. Manyapu likes to think of it as a type of superhero suit with a special button which makes the character impossible to touch. The suit has been dubbed the SPacesuit Integrated carbon nanotube Dust Ejection/Removal, or SPIcDER – a reference to spiderman.
“The whole system is customisable and optimisable,” says Manyapu, adding that it can bend and be built into different shapes and operate on the moon, Mars, or even asteroids with dust problems.
She says the next step will be to take these suits into space for further testing.
Acta Astronautica
