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Elephant Trunk-Like Device Sucks Up Lunar Soil

A magnetic trunk-like tube will help astronauts collect lunar soil

By Robert Ursache, Gadgets Editor

20th of March 2007, 08:08 GMT

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It's the trunk which makes the elephant so likable for most people. No wonder two scientists are working on a new handy trunk-device (well, that's not their only purpose, maybe they want people to like them too). Benjamin Eimer and Lawrence Taylor, both of the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, US, thought a trunk-like device might help mankind in its Moon

and Mars explorations.

It's a prototype of a magnetic, trunk-like tube that will help astronauts collect lunar soil without kicking up hazardous dust. But there is no air, and therefore no wind on the Moon. So, what's the problem?

Moon dust is sticky and clingy. No matter how hard the majestic 12 astronauts that walked on the moon tried to brush their suits before re-entering the cabin, some dust made its way inside. Once they took off their costumes, the astronauts could feel, smell and even taste the moon dust. Oh yeah, it smelled (still smells) bad, like gun-powder. Needless to say, dust particles could mess with the machinery and even harm astronauts' health if inhaled.

Future "Moon Humans" will certainly need lots of water, oxygen and other resources that can be extracted from the lunar soil. Apparently, resource extraction activities will stir up the dust. And this is where the magnetic collection tube that sucks up lunar soil will come in and solve the problem.

Here's how it will work. The tube's coils will create a magnetic field that will attract the lunar soil, keeping it centered to be distributed to storage facilities or processing plants using pipeline systems. The soil will be then bagged to stack on top of lunar habitats to deal with the temperature swings and to block radiation from space particles. Elephants probably have a rather different opinion about this.

TAGS:

Gadgets | Devices | Moon exploration | Lunar Soil | Science

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