NASA happens upon forecast breakthrough

A researcher who set out to develop a formula to protect Apollo sites on the moon from rocket exhaust has happened upon a way to improve weather forecasting on Earth.

John Lane, a physicist at NASA’s Kennedy Space Centre in Florida, who was working in his garden during a storm, realised the laser and reflector he was developing to detect lunar dust could also accurately determine the size of raindrops. This additional piece of information would be useful in filling out complex computer algorithms to determine the current conditions and forecast the weather.

“We may be able to refine (computer weather) models to make them more accurate. Weather radar data analysis makes assumptions about raindrop size, so I think this could improve the overall drop size distribution estimates,” said Lane.

Lane was looking for a way to calibrate a laser sensor to pick up the fine particles of blowing lunar dust and soil. Raindrops turned out to be a good stand-in for flying lunar soil. NASA wanted to find out how much damage would be done by the robotic landers getting too close to the six places on the moon where Apollo astronauts landed.

NASA fears that dust and soil particles thrown up by the rocket exhaust of a robot lander could damage the metal skin of the lunar module descent stages and experiment hardware left behind by the astronauts from 1969 – 1972. Such impact to these materials could result in loss of their scientific value to researchers who want to know what happens to man-made materials left on the moon.

“The Apollo sites have value scientifically and from an engineering perspective because they are a record of how these materials on the moon have interacted with the solar system over 40 years. They are witness places to the environment,” said Phil Metzger, leader of the Granular Mechanics and Regolith Operations Lab at Kennedy.

There are also numerous bags of waste left on the moon’s surface by the astronauts. Biologists want to examine these bags to determine if living organisms can survive on the moon (where there is no air and a constant bombardment of cosmic radiation) for almost 50 years

As research continues into the laser sensor, Lane also expects the work to continue on the weather forecasting applications of the technology.