Mt. Redoubt Gives Alaskans a Taste of the Moon

”]”]NASA News April 3, 2009:

“It’s very fine but angular – the sharp edges make it feel gritty and abrasive.”

“It can cause short circuits and failure of electronic components … and physical damage to equipment.”

“It’s much more abrasive than sand….scratches anything that comes in contact….”

“…a real nuisance….stuck to everything – equipment, instruments,…likely to penetrate seals,….plugs bolt holes, fouls tools, …..”

These quotes seem to all refer to the same annoying substances, but they don’t. In fact, the substances they refer to aren’t even from the same planet. The first two quotes are from Alaska, where people are dealing with volcanic ash from the ongoing eruption of Mount Redoubt.  The next two come from the Moon, where Apollo astronauts once dealt with a similar problem: moon dust.

“Volcanic ash and moon dust have a lot in common,” says Carole McLemore* of the Marshall Space Flight Center. “Both coat things and stick to them, are grimy, abrasive, damaging to equipment and vehicles, susceptible to electric charging, and risky to inhale.

The stories Alaskans and astronauts tell reveal some of the parallels:

Charles Sloan, a retired hydro geologist living in Anchorage, has experienced ash first hand. He was around for one of Mount Redoubt’s previous eruptions in 1989 and remembers a particularly harrowing incident.

“An international carrier flight — a large jet — flew into the hot ash plume from the volcano. The ash was sucked into the engines, causing them to shut down, and the plane plummeted!” All 245 terrified passengers on board KLM flight 867 held their breaths. “The plane dropped more than 2 miles before the crew could get the engines restarted! It limped in to an emergency landing in Anchorage.”

Dust flies from the tires of a moon buggy driven by Apollo 17 astronaut Gene Cernan. When a fender fell off, plumes of high-flying dust caused serious problems, which the astronauts solved using duct tape: click for full story.

“That was the third such incident over a five year period,” adds Tom Miller, former director and now scientist emeritus of the Alaska Volcano Observatory** in Anchorage.

Way back in 1972, astronauts Gene Cernan and Jack Schmitt experienced their own transportation problems when their moon buggy lost a fender. That doesn’t sound like a disaster on the scale of a plummeting airplane—but when moon dust is involved, even a lost fender can have serious consequences.

Sharp-edged dust wiped off visors scratch the glass, making helmets difficult to see out of. Watch out for that crater! And moondust has an uncanny way of working itself into hinges, latches and joints, rendering them useless.

The resourceful astronauts repaired the fender with duct tape, but even with all four fenders, Cernan had to dust off the rover at each stop. Getting rid of moon dust remained a top priority.

Tomorrow – living on the moon