Next week, NASA, as part of the Blue Ghost 1 mission, may send a “vacuum cleaner” to the Moon, which will collect soil samples from the surface of the Earth’s satellite. The journey to the moon will take about a month and a half.
Image source: nasa.gov
«NASA called the “vacuum cleaner” the Lunar PlanetVac (LPV), which will be the payload on Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost 1 lunar module. LPV was developed by Honeybee Robotics: its operating principle involves supplying compressed gas, through which the lunar regolith forms a “small tornado.” The dust cloud is directed into the transport tube and into the sample container.
The device works with regolith particles up to 1 cm in size; the collected samples will be sifted, photographed in a container and sent back to Earth. As part of the experiment, specialists will test the adhesion (sticking) properties of regolith dust and the effectiveness of gas jets as a cleaning agent. The system will operate in a completely autonomous mode, although in future missions to the Moon and Mars this kit will be able to operate under the control of astronauts. This design is an elegant alternative to the mechanical surface scraping traditionally used on other missions.
Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost 1 mission is scheduled to depart from Launch Pad 39A at the Space Center. Kennedy in Florida on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. It will take about 45 days to get to the Moon, 25 of which the module will spend in Earth orbit; landing is scheduled for early March.