Extreme Environment Wear Testbed for Materials Discovery for Lunar Dust Tolerant Applications

We propose an extreme environment wear testbed for materials discovery for lunar tolerant applications to address the lack of current test methods capable of capturing particulate abrasion of materials and mechanisms in representative lunar and planetary environment conditions. The testbed platform will be used to evaluate material wear by regolith in combination with environmental effects of vacuum; temperature and UV radiation. The advantage over current testing will enable materials and device testing and discovery in more representative environments without dependence on time- and resource-intensive flight experiments or large-scale test campaigns. After completing this project; LaRC; as well as ESDMD; STMD and broader space community; will gain the ability to more efficiently evaluate and identify materials concepts and technologies that can persist in extreme environments leading to rapid technology maturation and incorporation into end applications.

Lunar dust poses significant long-term durability and performance challenges to materials; vehicles; mechanisms and structures that will be used for the next generation of lunar exploration. The development of advanced materials; coatings and device technologies that can withstand these abrasive particles and extreme environmental conditions is critical. However; the lack of standardized and accessible methods for evaluating such materials and devices in aspects of the harsh lunar environment hinders progress in dust-tolerant technologies. This effort will enable a new capability to subject materials and mechanisms to abrasion caused by lunar dust; as well as vacuum; thermal gradients and UV radiation representative of the Moon and Cislunar and other extreme space environments; such as Mars; Uranus and Enceladus. The most significant outcomes of the Year 1 and 2 efforts brought online the SLIDE chamber as a configurable extreme environment wear testbed with dust delivery mechanism; evaluated hard and soft good candidate materials and identified NASA-wide stakeholders. The proposed testbed will continue to leverage existing collaborations with three universities via M-STAR and EPSCoR grants and two space act agreements and Agency connections to enable diverse materials and concepts for a number of existing activities within STMD; ESDMD and SMD in support of Artemis and planetary exploration. The testbed is also of great interest and utility to commercial partners for screening materials and device concepts prior to incorporation into end applications. The extreme environment wear testbed will be a critical capability that will enable testing of various materials and devices at a variety of levels of development to fully identify and ultimately enable disruptive technologies and concepts to advance NASA’s missions.

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