“ I think dust is probably one of our greatest inhibitors to a nominal operation on the Moon … probably the most difficult job of all the closeouts was trying to dust the suits.”
Gene Cernan after an EVA on the Moon covered in dust( NASA)
“ I think dust is probably one of our greatest inhibitors to a nominal operation on the Moon … probably the most difficult job of all the closeouts was trying to dust the suits.”
– Apollo 17 Commander Gene Cernan
Gene was right. The Apollo astronauts and all robotic technology that has landed on the Moon must deal with the small, sharp lunar regolith. But what is regolith? Lunar regolith refers to the rocks and soil on the Moon. When you look at the Moon, you can see light and dark patches. When Galileo looked at the Moon through a telescope in 1609, he thought the dark patches looked like smooth water which he called“ Mare,” an Italian word for ocean. When he studied the lighter parts of the Moon, they looked rugged like the mountains on the Earth, so he called them the Highlands. These are the names we still use today. The soil in the darker-colored Mare is mostly basalt, which is pretty common on Earth too. The lighter Highlands are mostly anorthosite, which is very rare on Earth.
The Nearside and Farside of the Moon( NASA)
Fun Fact!
The farside of the Moon isn’ t actually the dark side like the song. The soil is mostly the lighter Highland material and it gets the same amount of sunlight. However, because it faces away from Earth, communication satellites or spacecraft“ go dark” and cannot communicate with Earth when they go behind the Moon.
18 LET’ S GO AEROSPACE