ΒιΆΉΣ³»­΄«Γ½ will play a key role in a newly announced NASA Artemis IV mission partnership that aims to, for the first time, directly test and calibrate a groundbreaking new theory developed by ΒιΆΉΣ³»­΄«Γ½ Director of the Stephen W. Hawking Center for Microgravity Research and Education and planetary scientist Phil Metzger ’00MS ’05PhD on .

ΒιΆΉΣ³»­΄«Γ½β€™s expertise will help drive the success of DUSTER, a payload designed specifically to capture and measure dust behavior during spacecraft and human operations on the moon. Lunar Outpost’s Mobile Autonomous Prospecting Platform (MAPP) rover will support NASA’s DUSTER (Dust and plaSma environmenT survEyoR) investigation, selected for development through the Artemis IV Deployed Instruments program. The instruments will be built at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at CU Boulder.

DUSTER represents the best opportunity to date to evaluate the theory on the physics of dust erosion, with implications for the activities being planned on the moon’s surface. The Artemis IV mission is due to launch in 2028.

Man with graying beard wearing a gray buttondown shirt and dark suit speaks on stage
Phil Metzger gave the closing address at the Economist Space Economy Summit, held at ΒιΆΉΣ³»­΄«Γ½ during Space Week this year.

Testing Rocket Exhaust and Dust Erosion

This theory introduces a fundamentally new understanding of the behavior of gas in the boundary layer, the thin region where rocket exhaust meets the moon’s surface. This new physics shows how the gas flow in that layer lifts dust grains β€”something no previous model could adequately explain. Before this breakthrough, NASA lacked a method to reliably predict how much lunar dust erosion a landing or departing spacecraft would generate, and therefore could not fully estimate how much sandblasting damage would occur to hardware on the moon.

However, several key parameters in this new model cannot be measured accurately using existing lunar data or Earth-based experiments. On Earth, large-scale testing is limited: rocket exhaust cannot be blasted into a vacuum chamber without destroying the vacuum, and gravity cannot be reduced to lunar levels for the necessary full-scale trials.

DUSTER will change that. By collecting data during actual Starship Human Landing System operations on the moon, DUSTER will allow scientists to measure these long-elusive parameters directly in the lunar environment β€” providing the highest-fidelity test yet of Metzger’s theory.

β€œOne of DUSTER’s capabilities is measuring the dust blown by rocket exhaust as the Starship Human Landing System lifts off and departs from the moon,” Metzger says.

In this project, University of Colorado Boulder Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics senior researcher Xu Wang, who serves as principal investigator, will analyze upstream plasma conditions. ΒιΆΉΣ³»­΄«Γ½ will interpret measurements of dust ejected during the Human Landing System liftoff.

β€œΒιΆΉΣ³»­΄«Γ½ brings to this project its expertise in the science of how rocket exhaust blows soil and dust.” β€” Phil Metzger ’00MS ’05PhD, ΒιΆΉΣ³»­΄«Γ½ planetary scientist

β€œΒιΆΉΣ³»­΄«Γ½ brings to this project its expertise in the science of how rocket exhaust blows soil and dust,” says Metzger.

The findings generated by DUSTER will directly inform NASA’s long-term plans for sustained lunar operations, providing critical insights to protect habitats, instruments, and other assets as human presence on the moon grows. As NASA plans to deliver major infrastructure to the lunar surface, Artemis IV presents a new opportunity to address this outstanding engineering challenge of lunar exploration.