Lunar dust coats the spacesuit of Apollo 17 commander Gene
Cernan after his final moonwalk in December 1972. The dust could
be either friend or foe to future lunar explorers, so scientists
are creating their own moondust in the laboratory to help test
its effects on people and equipment. [NASA] KUHLMAN: I hate
dust. Dust gets into vacuum systems and wreaks havoc. But people
are going to need analogs if we ever go back to the Moon. Kim
Kuhlman is a researcher at the Planetary Science Institute. Over
the last few years, her job has included studying moondust --
without any real moondust. Like many other researchers, she's
studied lunar simulants -- mixtures of materials from here on
Earth that are similar to certain kinds of moondust. When people
start to build bases on the Moon, they'll want to use the
moondust, known as regolith, as a resource. They'll extract
water from it, along with hydrogen to make rocket fuel. They may
also use the regolith to make concrete, or to make solar cells
for producing electrici