Planned moon landings could pelt orbiting spacecraft with dusty debris
Artist’s depiction of the Blue Origin’s Blue Moon lander, which NASA has selected for its Artemis V mission
Blue Origin
Planned moon missions with large landers may stir up clouds of dust from the lunar surface, which could be dangerous for orbiters or even space stations.
Later this decade, NASA hopes to return humans to the surface of the moon with its Artemis programme. Two companies in the US, SpaceX and Blue Origin, have been contracted to develop landers that could take humans to the lunar surface by 2025 at the earliest.
However, …