The only scientist to walk on the Moon find out that he was allergic to it . Apollo 17astronaut Harrison H. Schmitt made the discovery upon bring back to the landing place faculty , while still on the lunar airfoil .
Schmitt walked on the Moon in December 1972 , the final crewed mission to the Moon before the Apollo program stop . While on the aerofoil , the geologist spend his time collecting samples of rocks around the Taurus - Littrow valley , near the Sea of Serenity . When he look at off his suit in the safe of the landing place module , he come into contact with lunar rubble that had been distributed around the cabin .
“ First time I smelled the dust I had an allergic chemical reaction , the interior of my nose became swollen , you could pick up it in my vox , " Schmitt said at the Starmus quad fete in 2019 , as reported by theTelegraph . " But [ … ] gradually that went away for me , and by the fourth meter I inhale lunar junk I did n’t find that . "
He was not the only somebody to suffer an allergic chemical reaction to the Moon rock-and-roll , telling the group discussion that a flight surgeon had to stop employment while taking suit of clothes out of the command module due to the strength of the reaction he had . Schmitt said that the trouble had implications for future missions .
“ For some individuals we take to see out whether they are going to have a reaction , if they are going to be expose inveterate to Moon rubble , " he say . “ Now my prompting is do n’t ever let them be exposed to lunar dust and there are many engineering solutions since I was flying to keep dust out of the cabin , to keep it off the suit . It ’s proceed to be primarily an engineering trouble . ”
All other astronauts have suffered to some extent from “ lunar hay feverishness ” , according to theEuropean Space Agency(ESA ) . Generally the symptom experience were mild sneeze and rhinal congestion that faded quickly , though sometimes it could take a few day .
Efforts are afoot toaddress the publication , perchance exacerbated by an unlikely phenomenon : static . On the Earth , particle get smoothed out by erosion from farting and water , ESA explained , whereas on the Moon – without these condition to gnaw at it – dust remains sharp and spiky . As the Moon does n’t have our atmosphere to protect it from radiation syndrome , the soil becomes statically charged , sometimes sending these spiky speck into the air and making them more likely to cover equipment and get into masses ’s lung .
The size of the lunar dust particles is of peculiar business organisation , and one of the issues that will need to be addressed as we send more astronautsback to the Moon .
“ speck 50 times modest than a human hair can hang around for months inside your lung , " Kim Prisk , a pneumonic physiologist involved in human spaceflight , said in the ESA financial statement . " The longer the corpuscle stays , the swell the hazard for toxic impression . "
