Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmitt scoops up samples of lunar dust in December 1972, the last time humans set foot on the Moon.

Apollo 17 astronaut Eugene A. Cernan sits inside the lunar module, covered in dust after walking on the lunar surface in December 1972.

LASP instruments selected for NASA's Artemis mission to the Moon

Instruments designed and built by researchers at CU Boulder’s Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) will be developed for a future Artemis mission, NASA announced recently. The LASP proposal, called the DUst and plaSma environmenT survEyoR (DUSTER), was selected as part of NASA’s Artemis Deployed Instruments Program to receive $24.8 million in funding to build the instruments, which will be deployed by astronauts on the lunar surface. 

Enabling long-term exploration on the Moon

Scientists are seeking to better understand the dust and plasma environment around the Artemis landing site near the Moon’s South Pole. The Moon has no global magnetic field and a tenuous atmosphere, so the surface is directly exposed to the solar wind and ultraviolet radiation, causing lunar dust to be charged and readily stick to all surfaces. Lunar dust is abrasive and poses significant obstacles for space exploration: it infiltrates and degrades equipment and spacesuits, obstructs solar panels and reduces their output, causes overheating of thermal radiators, and may even endanger astronaut health if inhaled. 

“We need to develop a complete picture of the dust and plasma environment at the lunar South Pole and how it varies over time and location to ensure astronaut safety and the operation of exploration equipment,” said DUSTER Principal Investigator Xu Wang, senior researcher at LASP and lecturer in the physics department. “By studying this environment, we gain crucial insights that will guide mitigation strategies and methods to enable long-term sustained human exploration on the Moon.”

LASP's dust and plasma instruments

Artemis will mark humanity’s first return to the lunar surface in more than 50 years and the first mission to land humans near the lunar South Pole, where the dust instruments will be deployed. DUSTER consists of two instruments: the Electrostatic Dust Analyzer—which will measure the charge, velocity, size and flux of dust particles lofted from the lunar surface—and the Relaxation SOunder and differentiaL VoltagE (RESOLVE) instrument—which will characterize the average electron density above the lunar surface using plasma sounding. 

Both of the DUSTER instruments will be built at LASP and housed on a Mobile Autonomous Prospecting Platform rover. The rover will be supplied by Lunar Outpost, a company based in Golden, Colorado, that develops and operates robotic systems for space exploration. 

LASP brings decades of expertise developing dust and plasma instruments for NASA missions, including the Surface Dust Analyzer instrument aboard the Europa Clipper mission now en route to Jupiter and the Interstellar Dust Experiment instrument aboard the recently launched Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe mission. 

“We are excited that LASP is contributing to the Artemis mission to deepen our knowledge of the Moon and beyond,” said LASP Director Bethany Ehlmann, who is also a professor in Earth science. “Building on LASP’s long legacy of instrumentation, we are working to safeguard U.S. astronauts and lunar infrastructure while advancing scientific research that will help unravel the mysteries of our closest celestial neighbor.”