Colorado University instruments to be deployed by astronauts on the moon

[Buster's Uncle]

KDVR Denver
CU instruments to be deployed by astronauts on the moon
Spencer Kristensen
Wed, December 10, 2025 at 5:08 PM EST
3 min read





DENVER (KDVR) — NASA announced that it will be sending instruments built by researchers at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at the University of Colorado Boulder to the moon, according to the laboratory’s website.

LASP’s proposal, the DUst and plaSma environmenT survEyoR, referred to as the DUSTER, was chosen for NASA’s Artemis IV Deployed Instruments Program to receive $24.8 million in funding to build instruments as part of the Artemis IV mission that will see astronauts deploy the designed instruments on the surface of the moon.

Artemis IV is set to launch in 2028 and will focus on learning about the dust and plasma environment near the moon’s South Pole.

“We need to develop a complete picture of the dust and plasma environment at the lunar south pole and how it varies over time and location to ensure astronaut safety and the operation of exploration equipment,” said DUSTER Principal Investigator Xu Wang, senior researcher at LASP and lecturer in the CU Boulder Physics Department, in a university article. “By studying this environment, we gain crucial insights that will guide mitigation strategies and methods to enable long-term sustained human exploration on the Moon.”

The article says that the moon has no global magnetic field and a tenuous atmosphere, resulting in the surface being directly exposed to solar wind and ultraviolet radiation, which charges lunar dust and causes it to charge and stick to all surfaces.

The dust can destroy equipment and space suits, obstruct solar panels, overheat thermal radiators and is toxic if an astronaut inhales it.

Artemis IV will follow the Artemis III mission, which will see humans return to the moon for the first time since 1972, as well as the first time to land at the South Pole. Artemis IV will be the second lunar landing of the Artemis program.

DUSTER has two instruments called the Electrostatic Dust Analyzer, the EDA, which measures the charge, velocity, size and flux of dust particles, and the Relaxation SOunder and differentiaL VoltagE, the RESOLVE, which uses plasma sounding to characterize the average electron density above the lunar surface.

The instruments will be built at LASP and housed by the Mobile Autonomous Prospecting Platform, or MAPP, rover. MAPP is being supplied by Lunar Outpost, a robot developer for space exploration based in Golden.

“We are excited that LASP is contributing to the Artemis mission to deepen our knowledge of the Moon and beyond,” said LASP Director Bethany Ehlmann. “Building on LASP’s long legacy of instrumentation, we are working to safeguard U.S. astronauts and lunar infrastructure while advancing scientific research that will help unravel the mysteries of our closest celestial neighbor.”

DUSTER is the latest project in the lineage of space exploration projects by NASA to come from LASP.

The Student Dust Counter was deployed on the New Horizons mission to Pluto, the Surface Dust Analyzer is part of the Europa Clipper mission en route to Jupiter, the Interstellar Dust Experiment aboard the Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe mission and the MAVEN Langmuir Probe and Waves instrument at Mars.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/articles/cu-instruments-deployed-astronauts-moon-220819147.html