By Evan Ackerman It's pretty dusty up there on the moon. So dusty, in fact, that in an effort to prepare the lunar surface for human habitation, a company called W.I.S.E. Retail Solutions is now stuffing Apollo 11 commemorative pens with it and selling them to earthlings to help make the place a bit tidier. The pens have a little chamber for the dust, as well as "a handcrafted, individually hand ...

... micro meteors, the easiest source of shielding is regolith but the temperature changes caused by the day-night cycle ... possibly causing leaks. Also if a base is buried in regolith it will be difficult to avoid getting it inside the base where it could damage ... dilution gases are rare but do occur in the surface regolith and should be collected if any kind of mining is occurring. But if the pressure ...

... he said. Reduce, reuse, recycle Once the device has sucked up lunar dirt, or regolith, this material could be conveniently diverted and used as a protective covering over homes (regolith is ... the excavator is from leftover rocket fuel, then the exhaust will already be hot, and as it passes into the regolith it can heat the dirt up. Since every bit of material that we carry to the moon adds expensive ...

... lab, and started looking for water. Phoenix uses a robotic scoop arm to deliver regolith samples to the suite of instruments aboard the Lander--with one exception. The thermal and electrical ... Devices Inc. is actually mounted on the robotic arm and makes direct contact with the regolith. It measures thermal conductivity, thermal diffusivity, electrical conductivity, and dielectric permittivity of ...

... with an eye toward employing lunar dirt for as many uses as possible: Once the device has sucked up lunar dirt, or regolith, this material could be conveniently diverted and used as a protective covering over homes (regolith is good for shielding from radiation). The dirt could also be processed to extract the oxygen bound up in its minerals… [I]nstead of carting ...

... to build lunar habitats using lunar resources. One group has come up with a way to "dig" lunar regolith by forcing gas into the ground, thus lifting dirt out. That dirt could ... several connected together and fully deployed. Using the above digging technique, copious amounts of regolith from the area immediately around the modules could be thrown onto the habitat, creating radiation shielding feet ...