NASA Is Sending A Vacuum Cleaner To The Surface Of The Moon

Move over, Dyson. There’s a new high-tech vacuum about to step into the spotlight. NASA is sending a vacuum cleaner to the moon with the Blue Ghost mission, set to launch this month. The space agency isn’t planning to tidy up the lunar surface. The vacuum is designed to suck up samples for study. It’s a technology demonstration that could prove its usefulness for future moon missions.

The Lunar PlanetVac, more succinctly known as LPV, aims to deal with a tricky problem in space exploration: the collection and study of soil and rock. NASA wants to do this in a fast and affordable manner. That’s where LPV comes in. The instrument is designed by Honeybee Robotics, part of Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin space venture.

NASA described LPV as “essentially, a vacuum cleaner that brings its own gas” in a statement on Jan. 8. LPV operates autonomously and can collect a sample in seconds. “LPV’s sampling head will use pressurized gas to stir up the lunar regolith, or soil, creating a small tornado,” NASA said. “If successful, material from the dust cloud it creates then will be funneled into a transfer tube via the payload’s secondary pneumatic jets and collected in a sample container.” The sample will be photographed inside the container and the images will be sent back to Earth.

The vacuum-cleaner-like operation could be an efficient and resilient way to gather and study samples. It doesn’t require a mechanical arm, digging or human intervention.

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NASA has plans to return astronauts to the moon through its Artemis program. The goal is to have a regular human presence there. That means taking advantage of resources available on the moon. The LPV technology “could benefit the search for water, helium and other resources and provide a clearer picture of in situ materials available to NASA and its partners for fabricating lunar habitats and launch pads, expanding scientific knowledge and the practical exploration of the solar system every step of the way,” said NASA’s Dennis Harris, LPV payload manager at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama.

LPV’s ride to the moon is with Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost mission. The Blue Ghost 1 lunar lander will carry 10 NASA instruments to the lunar surface as part of the space agency’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS) initiative. It’s part of NASA’s effort to use commercial companies for space exploration tasks.

Firefly named the mission “Ghost Riders in the Sky.” The company is targeting a Jan. 15 launch from Kennedy Space Center in Florida with an assist from a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. If the launch goes off on time, the lander will touch down on the moon in early March with the vacuum cleaner on board. Blue Ghost is expected to operate for about 14 Earth days and capture views of the lunar sunset.

If LPV performs as expected, the technology could be adapted and evolved for future missions, including potential sample return missions or explorations on other moons or planets. It’s a bit different than the vacuum cleaner you keep in your closet at home. LPV sucks in the name of science.

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