Why Is Moon Dust Sticky? Physicist Says He Has Answer

Photo: Astronaut Edwin Aldrin recorded his footprint in 1969. NASA

From the L.A. Times:

By analyzing 40-year-old Apollo program tapes, he has concluded that stickiness is influenced by the angle of the sun's rays. The finding could help protect future colonists from a health hazard.

One of the biggest problems facing America's space agency as it prepares to return to the moon is how to manage lunar dust. It gets into everything. Worse, it's sticky, adhering to spacesuits and posing a potentially serious health hazard to future colonists.

Now, a scientist who has been studying the problem off and on over four decades thinks he may have untangled the mystery of why that dust is so sticky. Brian O'Brien, an Australian physicist who worked on the Apollo program in the 1960s, said the sun's ultraviolet and X-ray radiation gives a positive charge to the dust, making it stick to surfaces such as spacesuits.

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