Rocket ‘Sandblasts’ Could Pose Major Risk on Moon, New Studies Warn
A new theory of how rockets erode moon soil makes a startling prediction: powered lunar landings may fling around four to 10 times more material than previously thought. The work suggests that without sufficient precautions, rocket-lofted lunar dust would pose a serious sandblasting hazard to cargo and crew on the moon. The physicist behind the new calculations, Phil Metzger, is one of the world’s leading experts on how rocket plumes interact with planetary surfaces. Now that his research has been published in two studies in the journal Icarus, he is calling for more global cooperation on the problem as space agencies plan out long-term lunar infrastructure—including human outposts. “The amount of damage [that lunar dust] might cause to a spacecraft could be an order of magnitude worse than we believed,” says Metzger, director of the University of Central Florida’s Stephen W. Hawking Center for Microgravity Research and Education.
Scientific American