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Christopher Wohl

Chemist Researches Lunar “True Grit” Problem for NASA

Christopher Wohl, Ph.D., a research chemist, accepted a daunting professional research challenge in 2006—to seek imaginative new ways to help NASA ameliorate nagging moon-dust problems as a participant in the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Postdoctoral Program. He also was confronted with a medical challenge, as physicians diagnosed him with a life-threatening brain tumor. Wohl managed, during 2007, with assistance from NASA and ORAU, to handle both formidable challenges commendably. Photo courtesy of Sean Smith, NASA.

In 1960, when President John F. Kennedy challenged Americans to walk on the moon, the toughest obstacles seemed to include space navigation, achieving a soft landing and enduring lunar temperature extremes.

Who knew that lunar dust would also pose a barrier to mankind’s “giant leap” into space?

Christopher Wohl, Ph.D., a Virginia Beach, Va. chemist, has learned much about that gritty substance since early 2007, when he received a NASA Postdoctoral Program Fellowship, which is administered by Oak Ridge Associated Universities (ORAU).

The dust is a problem. In 1971, it left astronaut Harrison Schmitt suffering a sort of lunar hay fever. And of moon missions generally, NASA veteran Gene Cernan said, “You’re continually fighting the dust problem, outside and inside the spacecraft.”

In the 1970s, moon dust ills were acute enough that NASA branded the first Apollo astronauts to walk the moon “the dirty dozen.” Wohl’s research may offer latter-day astronauts materials that repel dust.

Wohl, a Virginia Tech University graduate with a doctorate degree from Virginia Commonwealth University, said his work at NASA’s Langley Research Center entails using electrodynamics and such substances as polymers to keep jagged, microscopic dust particles from clinging to space suits and other lunar exploration materials. Terrestrial dust particles have been rounded by eons of wind and water erosion—processes alien to the arid, airless moon. Moon dust, however, is quite different. It’s fine as flour but abrasive as sandpaper, and is clingy as Velcro, thanks to micrometeorites that bombard dust particles, yielding heat that turns them into jagged shards of molten glass.

Moon dust, exposed by day to ultraviolet light and by night to solar wind, also accumulates static electric charges, so particles cling to whatever they touch. Particles scour protective film off helmet visors, corrode critical seals, and shred spacesuit seams. The dust may also cause silicosis, a respiratory illness, if particles are inhaled and implanted in lungs.

NASA research, Wohl said, can teach scientists valuable lessons about conditions on a lunar surface that’s really an “electron soup” of ions. Enhancing our understanding of earth’s nearest neighbor in space remains essential, if men and women are to spend more time there.

As a chemist, Wohl appreciates the opportunity to perform research on a topic of importance for NASA; but he feels an even more profound gratitude toward NASA and ORAU on a topic of a more personal nature.

In 2006, the year of Wohl’s grant, his doctors told Wohl he had a brain tumor that required surgery in October 2007 at the University of Virginia. The ordeal reordered Wohl’s research, yet he found NASA and ORAU “extremely understanding…compassionate” about his illness.

“I received e-mails from them asking how I was doing and wishing me well,” he said. “There was never the slightest indication that my position in the program would be in jeopardy.”