ORANGE COUNTY, Fla. — A combination of art and nature may be used to protect astronauts as they return to the moon later this decade.

Doctoral graduate students at the University of Central Florida (UCF) are undertaking the project as part of NASA’s 2021 Breakthrough, Innovative and Game-changing (BIG) Idea Challenge. The space agency chose seven university teams to participate and awarded nearly $1 million to develop solutions to the problem of protecting spacesuits from lunar dust. 

“This challenge is an exciting opportunity both for university students and the space agency,” said Niki Werkheiser, the director of technology maturation within NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD), back in January. “Lunar dust affects everything we do on the Moon, so we need many strategies for reducing or preventing its abrasive effects. These innovative student concepts could help solve some of NASA’s most pressing lunar dust problems.”

The UCF team named their project Lunar Dust Mitigating Electrostatic Micro-Textured Overlay (LETO) and are working in partnership with Morphotonics, a tech company in The Netherlands with a “focus on large-area Roll-to-Plate micro- and nanoimprint technology.”

Part of their design relies on the use of a nano-microscale or “microstructure,” the design of which is based on the hairs of pollinators, like honeybees, that use an electrostatic charge to transfer pollen. 

The spacesuit overlay material uses a similar principle with its microstructure, which also decreases the adhesion of the lunar dust to the surface. That was verified through testing using material designed to mimic lunar dust found in the highlands of the moon, which was made by the UCF Exolith Lab. 

“If we can show it in the laboratory, maybe a NASA can develop it and apply it to the actual space of material. And who knows, it might be one of the solutions that they can really use,” said David Fox, a doctoral candidate in UCF’s Department of Chemistry and one of the leads on the UCF team.

Unlike Apollo missions that lasted from 21 to 75 hours, Artemis missions will extend up to 14 days, or 336 hours, so the Exploration Extravehicular Mobility Units (xEMUs), or spacesuits, need to be especially durable. 

The 2016 Dust Mitigation Gap Assessment Report pointed to nine categories of issues that lunar dust can pose on a mission to the moon:

1. Vision obscuration
2. False instrument readings
3. Dust coating and contamination
4. Loss of traction
5. Clogging of mechanisms
6. Abrasion
7. Thermal control problems
8. Seal failures
9. Inhalation and irritation

The abrasiveness of the dust was enough to wear through the outer suit layer in several spots on some boots used during the Apollo moon landings. 

One way that the UCF team is dealing with durability in their overlay material is through the way it is molded. Inspired by Japanese origami, they are using a folding pattern in crafting the material that forms the macrostructure of the design. 

“If you try to stretch something that’s flat, you might rip it. You might destroy it," said UCF team member Yuen Yee Li Sip. "So, that’s going to affect your overlay. So, in our case, by adding these materials, that helps with the reducing of strain."

The team is still working on various dodecahedron-based origami designs to determine what works best. Team members said it may differ depending on which part of the suit is being covered. 

The Artemis III mission will be the first to take humans back to the surface of the moon since the end of the Apollo era. There may be a possibility that the LETO design (named after Leto, the Greek goddess and mother of Apollo and Artemis) will help keep astronauts safer while they work there.