NASA’s Rapid Soil Sweeper: Collecting Samples in a Blink!

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is unveiling an innovative technology, the Lunar PlanetVac (LPV), which will transform the methods used by scientists to gather and analyze soil and rock samples from the Moon and other celestial bodies.

Conceived by Honeybee Robotics, a subsidiary of Blue Origin, LPV functions similarly to an advanced vacuum cleaner. It utilizes pressurized gas to agitate lunar soil, generating a mini-tornado that channels the material into a sample container.

Attached to Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost 1 lunar lander, this system will autonomously gather and evaluate data to be relayed back to Earth.

The apparatus removes the necessity for mechanical appendages, minimizing wear and tear. “There’s no excavation, no mechanical arm that might degrade requiring maintenance or replacement – it operates like a vacuum cleaner,” stated Dennis Harris, who oversees LPV at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. “The technology aboard this CLPS payload could aid in the quest for water, helium, and other resources and offer a more comprehensive understanding of the in situ materials available to NASA and its collaborators for constructing lunar habitats and launch pads, thereby enhancing scientific knowledge and the practical exploration of the solar system at every step.”

Positioned on the Blue Ghost lander, LPV’s sampling head will release pressurized gas to agitate the lunar soil, forming a small dust tornado. The disturbed particles, some reaching up to one cm in size, will be directed into a transfer tube through secondary pneumatic jets and collected in a sample container. Within the container, the regolith will undergo sieving, photography, and analysis, with real-time information sent back to researchers on Earth.

This autonomous procedure, anticipated to take just seconds, complies with stringent planetary protection protocols to maintain sample fidelity. The technology also facilitates in situ assessment, allowing researchers to analyze the composition of lunar materials on-site.

The Lunar PlanetVac is among 10 payloads onboard Firefly’s Blue Ghost lunar lander, of which seven are supervised by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center.