Aerospace PhD Candidate Kavya Manyapu to Defend Dissertation on July 20
Aerospace Science Ph.D. candidate, Kavya Manyapu, will defend her dissertation as follows. All Space Studies students, faculty and staff are encouraged to attend.
When: Thursday, July 20th at noon (Central Daylight Savings Time)
Where: Ryan Hall, Room 111
Title: Spacesuit Integrated Carbon Nanotube Dust Mitigation System for Lunar Exploration
About the research: Lunar dust proved to be troublesome during the Apollo missions. The lunar dust comprises of fine particles, with electric charges imparted by solar winds and Ultraviolet radiation. As such, it adheres readily, and easily penetrates through smallest crevices into mechanisms. During Apollo missions, the powdery dust got into everything and substantially degraded the performance of spacesuits by abrading suit fabric and clogging seals. Dust also degraded other critical equipment and was thus shown to be a major issue for surface operations. Even inside the lunar module, Apollo astronauts were exposed to this dust after they removed their dust coated spacesuits. This historical evidence from the Apollo missions has compelled NASA to identify dust mitigation as a critical path. This important environmental challenge must be overcome prior to sending humans back to the lunar surface and potentially to other surfaces such as Mars and asteroids with dusty environments.
Several concepts were successfully investigated by the international research community for preventing deposition of lunar dust on rigid surfaces (ex: solar cells, thermal radiators). However, applying these technologies for flexible surfaces and specifically to spacesuits has remained an open challenge, due to the complexity of the suit design, geometry, and dynamics. This research developed and demonstrated the Spacesuit Integrated Carbon nanotube Dust Ejection/Removal (SPIcDER) system to protect spacesuits and other flexible surfaces from lunar dust. SPIcDER aims for a self-cleaning spacesuit that can repel lunar dust and protect spacesuits from dust contamination.
About the presenter: Kavya K. Manyapu is a Flight Crew Operations and Test Engineer at the Boeing Company working on the CST-100 Starliner Program. She also works as a Mission Evaluation Room (MER) Duty officer supporting ISS Flight Operations. She holds a B.S in Aerospace Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology and M.S in Aeronautics and Astronautics from MIT. Her advisor is Dr. Pablo De Leon from the Human Spaceflight Laboratory.
******Those unable to attend in person may view the live webcast******
1) A live webcast which includes PowerPoint slides will be available here.
2) Via Adobe ConnectPro. Sign in as a guest, or use your Connect-Pro log-in.