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...I picked up my shovel and I walked to the mine
I loaded sixteen tons of number nine coal ....
You load sixteen tons, what do you get .... 1
Jan.
7, 2009: If you listen closely, you might hear a
NASA project manager singing this song. Lately, Marshall Space
Flight Center's Carole McLemore has been working at the end
of a sledge hammer opposite a big pile of rocks, so she has
good reason to sing the song Tennessee Ernie Ford made famous.
"I
call it 'choppin' rocks,' " says McLemore, who manages
Marshall's Regolith Simulant Team." The guys keep correcting
me. 'It's 'bustin' rocks, Carole,' they say."
Whether
choppin' or bustin', what's this petite woman doing with a
sledge hammer in her hands? She's making fake moon dust.
"We
call it "simulated lunar regolith'," says McLemore.
"We need just the right kind of rocks to make this stuff,
and we're getting them from the Stillwater Mine in Nye, Montana."
Above:
Carole McLemore of the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center busts
rocks at the Stillwater Mine in Nye, Montana. [Larger
image]
The
Marshall team is working with the US Geological Survey (USGS)
to develop a realistic moondust substitute, or simulant, in
support of NASA's future lunar exploration. Team members pound
on boulder sized rocks to break them into manageable chunks,
dump these chunks into buckets, and lug the buckets over to
pickup trucks containing reinforced containers to hold the
rocks. The pickups carry the rocks down the mountain for loading
onto 18 wheelers that transport tons of the material to the
USGS in Denver. The USGS makes the simulant by crushing and
grinding the rocks and blending in small amounts of natural
minerals according to a well-researched "recipe"
to approximate the make up of genuine moondust and moon dirt.
This
is a lot of work, but McLemore believes it's worth the effort:
"NASA plans to send humans to the moon to live and work,
and the place is filled with gritty dust and powder that sticks
to space suits, equipment – to anything and everything,"
she explains. "It's even inhaled into lungs. So we need
high fidelity simulant to work with here on Earth to learn how
to work in the real thing up there on the moon. There simply
aren't enough Apollo samples of real moondust to do all the
research that needs to be done."
Simulated
regolith can be used as a "guinea pig" to help researchers
find ways to make useful things from moon dirt. A favorite
example is concrete. Adding, for instance, epoxy to lunar
regolith makes a very strong concrete that could be used to
build habitats or other structures. Properly baked, a mixture
of sulphur and moondust also makes good concrete, and other
recipes are sure to be found as the research progresses. On
the moon and later on Mars, local resources are going to be
crucial to astronauts who can't remain wholly dependent on
Earth for supplies.
Working
with simulated moondust may help researchers figure out how
to extract valuable elements and minerals from the real thing.
Above:
The moon is blanketed in dust--an ever present fact of life
for future lunar explorers. Photo credit: NASA/Apollo 17.
[Larger
image]
"For
example, moondust and many moon rocks are rich in oxygen,"
says Christian Schrader, a geologist on the Marshall regolith
team. "If we can figure out how to extract it, humans
could actually use moondust as a source of breathable air
in a future lunar habitat. And the oxygen, along with the
hydrogen that exists in the dirt, rocks, and possibly in polar
ice, could be used to generate electricity using fuel cells,
which make drinkable water as a by-product. Hydrogen and oxygen
are also rocket propellant."
It
seems that the Stillwater Mine has "the right stuff"
to use as feedstock in creating the simulant so vital to lunar
research. Some of the rocks there are 2.7 billion years old.
"There's
a huge magma chamber that formed under the ground there,"
says Schrader. "The magma crystallized over time and
formed thick layers of what we call 'anorthosite.' The geology
at Stillwater is roughly analogous to how the moon's highland
crust crystallized and cooled, so it's a great place for us
to go rock collecting."
That's
why these scientists are heading up the side of a rocky mountain
with sledge hammers and pick axes to pound away at big boulders
that promise to yield, albeit with great resistance, good
rocks for making regolith.
"Sometimes
arctic winds blow down off the mountains and pummel us while
we work," says Schrader. "It can be brutal."
But
it's all in the name of science. So don't just stand there
leaning on your shovel! Start choppin'!
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Special
thanks: "The
Stillwater Mine people have been very helpful in so many ways,"says
Carole McLemore. "In addition to the simulant feedstock,
they've donated manhours and trucks to help us. And the mine
has a lot of other advantages for us. Logging and mining roads
crisscross the mine, so we can get trucks in there for loading
the tons of material we gather. We couldn't do it without
them. "
Author: Dauna Coulter
| Editor: Dr.
Tony Phillips | Credit: Science@NASA
| more
information |
| Footnote
1: "Sixteen Tons" is a song about
the misery of coal mining, first recorded in 1946 by
U.S. country singer Merle Travis and released on his
box set album Folk Songs of the However, it was Tennessee
Ernie Ford's 1955 rendition of "Sixteen Tons"
that reached number one in the Billboard charts. The
song's authorship is generally attributed to Merle Travis,
to whom it is credited on his 1947 recording. However,
Kentucky ex-coalminer and singer/songwriter George S.
Davis claimed to have written this song in the 1930s.
Glenn
Research Center funds this regolith effort through the
Dust Management Project under their Exploration Technology
Development Program.
Johnson
Space Center's Astromaterials Research and Exploration
Science Directorate provided Apollo samples for testing
and compositional analysis to aid in creating a realistic
simulant. They also helped gather data and other information
about previous simulant work for reference.
People
involved in the Lunar Regolith Simulant Development
and Characterization effort:
At Marshall Space Flight Center:
VP33/John Fikes - Deputy Project Manager
VP61/Dr. Doug Rickman - Chief Project Scientist (Geologist)
BAE (Sub-contractor to Teledyne Brown Engineering)/Christian
Schrader – Geologist
Teledyne Brown Engineering/Hans Hoelzer (Mathematician
- Figures of Merit)
Teledyne Brown Engineering/Kathy Fourroux (Software
- Figures of Merit)
VP33/Carole McLemore - Project Manager
At the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS)
Dr. Steve Wilson (Chemist)
Dr. Doug Stoeser (Geologist)
Dr. Greg Meeker
Dr. Geoff Plumlee
NASA's
Future: US
Space Exploration Policy |
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