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NASA's lunar Roomba set to suck up Moon dirt for study

Started by Rick, Jan 10, 2025, 21:05:36

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Rick

NASA's lunar Roomba set to suck up Moon dirt for study

NASA is sending a "vacuum cleaner" to the Moon as a payload on next week's Blue Ghost 1 mission to land on the lunar surface.

The LPV was developed by Honeybee Robotics and works by using pressurized gas to stir up the lunar regolith into a "small tornado." The resulting dust cloud then gets funneled into a transfer tube by pneumatic jets and dumped into a sample container.

The device can handle particles of regolith measuring up to 1 cm in size, and the collected Moon dirt is then sieved, photographed in the sample container, and the findings transmitted back to Earth. The device will also test the regolith dust's adhesion and gas jets' efficiency as a cleaning agent.

More: https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/09/nasa_moon_vacuum_cleaner/