The investigation on lunar dust passive protection of aluminum surface

Lunar dust is the biggest problem met in lunar exploration. The deposited lunar dust on lunar exploration equipment will affect their function or even let them lose efficiency. This study firstly analyses the main adhesion force is Van Der Waals Force. Thus, in order to protect lunar equipment from lunar harzards, a low surface energy and micro structure surface should be designed. In this paper, this protect surface is obtained through electrochemical etching on condition of different electrical density and time. Finally, the best efficient protect surface with surface energy of 22.52mJ/m2 and with surface roughness of 2.444μm is obtained and its lunar dust protection efficiency is 58.41% when the rotation angle is 60°, which reveals that lunar dust passive protection method can be widely used in future deep space exploration. Through test, the samples has bigger roughness when the etching time and current increase using electrochemical etching, which may get lunar dust stuck in microstructure and therefore decrease lunar dust protection efficiency. In future, we are prepared to design high efficient lunar dust passive protection surfaces for different protected instrument surface, which will save much energy than active lunar dust protection method.