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Potential Contamination of Lunar Explorers’ Water Supply by Moon Dust

Water purification is an enormous enterprise on Earth. Firms provide every thing from desalination to offering simply the suitable pH stage for ingesting water. However on the Moon, there gained’t be the same technical infrastructure to help the astronauts trying to make a everlasting base there. And there’s one explicit materials that may make water purification even more durable – Moon mud.
We’ve reported loads of instances in regards to the well being issues brought on by the lunar regolith, so it appears obvious that you just don’t wish to drink it. Much more so, the abrasive mud may cause points with seals, resembling these utilized in electrolyzers to create rocket gas out of in-situ water sources. It could possibly even adversely have an effect on water purification gear itself.
Sadly, this contamination is inevitable. Lunar mud is way too adhesive and electrostatically charged to be saved fully separate from the equipment that might recycle or purify the water. So, a bunch of researchers from DLR in Germany determined to check what would occur in the event you deliberately dissolved lunar regolith.
The quick reply is, unsurprisingly, nothing good. Dissolved lunar regolith causes pH, turbidity, and aluminum concentrations all exceed World Well being Group benchmarks for protected ingesting water. This occurred even with quick publicity instances (2 minutes) and static pH values, as they used a 5.5 pH buffer in a part of the experiments.
They didn’t use precise lunar mud for these experiments, however a simulant modeled on the regolith returned through the Apollo 16 mission. It mimics the regolith that’s regarded as most just like the Artemis touchdown websites. Along with the pH modifications and the quantity of publicity time (which went as much as 72 hours), the authors additionally various the quantity of dissolved oxygen within the system and the particle dimension of the simulant.
These damaging outcomes occurred for each take a look at variation, irrespective of the mixture of the 4 management variables used. In the end, meaning engineers should devise a system to filter the water from these deposits earlier than it may be recycled into the general water system.

Credit score: NASA
The paper explored some potential options for that water purification system. Every of the bounds that had been violated requires its purification methodology. Within the writer’s estimation, decreasing the turbidity is the primary requirement. To take action, they recommend doing normal filtration or permitting the mud particles to settle.
Eradicating aluminum is the following precedence, with one other experiment exhibiting that vegetation grown in lunar soil exhibit indicators of aluminum toxicity. Further ions, together with calcium, iron, and manganese, must be eliminated as properly, as they had been above acceptable ranges in some take a look at batches. Eradicating these ions would require a reverse osmosis course of or ion change. Ion removing is essential for a totally purposeful electrolyzer system too.
The authors appeared to be finally working in the direction of a platform to check and validate water purification processes for future lunar exploration missions. Given the outcomes from their experimentation, there’ll undoubtedly be additional rounds of testing and plenty of expertise improvement to handle these technical challenges. In the end, astronauts should drink water on the Moon – and it gained’t be coming simply from bottles from Earth.
Be taught Extra:
Freer, Pesch, & Zabel – Experimental study to characterize water contaminated by lunar dust
UT – The Moon Is Toxic
UT – Astronauts Will Be Tracking Dust Into the Lunar Gateway. Is This a Problem?
UT – Lunar Dust is Still One of The Biggest Challenges Facing Moon Exploration
Lead Picture:
Turbidity samples of a few of the dissolved regolith.
Credit score – Freer, Pesch, & Zabel
News
GOP widens UC antisemitism investigations, hitting UCLA, UC San Francisco medical schools

The UCLA and UC San Francisco medical schools have been given two weeks to submit years of internal documents to a Republican-led congressional committee about alleged antisemitism and how the schools responded, widening the federal government’s far-reaching investigations into the University of California.
The demands from House Education and Workforce Committee Chair Rep. Tim Walberg (R-Mich.) cited reports of Jewish people “experiencing hostility and fear” at each campus and that universities had not proved that they “meaningfully responded.”
Walberg’s letters said the committee would be investigating whether the schools violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color and national origin in programs and activities receiving federal financial assistance.
The additional investigation comes as top UC officials and the Justice Department have begun negotiations over allegations that the UCLA campus overall has been hostile to Jewish students, staff and faculty. The federal government has suspended more than $500 million in health, medical and energy research grants from UCLA and is seeking $1 billion and major campus changes before restoring the funds.
The Trump administration cited alleged Title VI violations when pulling the money.
The House committee said Monday it wanted “all documents and communications” since Sept. 1, 2021, tied to complaints of antisemitic incidents at UCLA and UC San Fransisco. A similar letter was also sent to the University of Illinois College of Medicine.
Some UCLA medical school faculty are members of a broader campus organization, the Jewish Faculty Resilience Group, that has aired complaints publicly for months at UC regents meetings about antisemitism.
The group’s chair, medical school assistant clinical professor of psychiatry Kira Stein, is mentioned in the Monday letter to UCLA as a faculty member who has reported anti-Jewish incidents.
“Federal lawmakers, in their letter released today, echoed what many of us have experienced firsthand: Antisemitism at UCLA is common, corrosive, and continues to be met with silence and inaction from the university administration and local leaders,” Stein said in a statement Monday.
The committee has asked for communications with UCLA’s medical school dean, administrators who work on diversity or restorative justice-related programs, and several other positions as well as data on specific events and courses, including one on “structural racism and health equity.”
It also asked for emails from administrators “referring or relating to antisemitism or the terms Jewish, Israel, Israeli, Palestine, or Palestinian.” And it requests information about a January report focused on the medical school that a UCLA task force on anti-Palestinian, anti-Muslim and anti-Arab racism prepared.
That 35-page report said “students, residents and faculty in the David Geffen School of Medicine who express support for Palestinian human rights, and who offer any criticism of Israel’s violation of them, face harassment from within and outside the medical school.”
The House committee has asked for “all documents and communications since October 7, 2023 in the possession of the office of the executive vice chancellor” — UCLA Provost Darnell Hunt — related to that task force. Members of the task force have accused UCLA of not taking complaints of bias incidents against Muslims, Arab Americans and Palestinian Americans as seriously as it has reports of antisemitism.
Walberg said that, in addition to Title VI enforcement, he would use the documents to “aid the committee in considering whether potential legislative changes, including legislation to specifically address antisemitic discrimination, are needed.”
The UCLA medical school is also under a Department of Health and Human Services investigation over accusations that it “discriminates on the basis of race, color, or national origin in its admissions.” UCLA denied the charges and the department has not formally announced the results of its investigation that began in late March. But when it canceled hundreds of millions in grants to UCLA last month, the Trump administration said the action was due in part to its belief that the university illegally uses race in admissions.
In a Monday statement, a spokesperson for the UCLA medical school said it opposed antisemitism.
“Antisemitism has no place at UCLA’s medical school. Protecting the civil rights of our Jewish community members remains a top priority,” the statement said. “We are committed to fair processes in all our educational programs and activities, consistent with federal and state anti-discrimination laws and continue to take specific steps to foster an environment free of antisemitism and other forms of discrimination and harassment.”
A spokesperson for UC San Francisco did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Tense disagreements have erupted at the UCLA medical school between pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian students, faculty and staff since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel and Israel’s ensuing war in Gaza. Each has accused the other of discrimination, doxxing and harassment. Incidents at the school have been cited by two UCLA task forces, one that looked at antisemitism and anti-Israeli bias and the other that researched anti-Palestinian, anti-Muslim and anti-Arab racism.
News
Abrego Garcia Detained Again After Administration Signaled It Would Re-Deport Him
A judge in Maryland barred the administration from immediately deporting Kilmar Armando Abrego Garcia until he had a chance to challenge the move.
News
Fed Chair Jerome Powell is worried about the job market. Here are 3 red flags for workers.

When Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell on Friday opened the door to cutting interest rates for the first time in nearly a year, he noted the tremors beginning to shake a main pillar of the U.S. economy: the labor market.
Concerns about the pace of job growth were heightened earlier this month after government data showed a sharp slowdown in hiring in July, along with much weaker payroll gains in May and June than previously thought. The disappointing numbers were alarming enough for President Trump to question their accuracy and to fire the head of the agency tasked with compiling the data.
Yet labor experts tell CBS News they weren’t surprised by the downturn, and caution that more pain could be in store for job seekers. Data released since the August 1 job numbers shows companies are delaying hiring as they adjust course to account for headwinds including fresh U.S. tariffs and the advent of artificial intelligence, they say.
“There’s a real cooling in the labor market,” Andy Challenger, senior vice president of executive outplacement firm Challenger, Gray & Christmas, told CBS MoneyWatch. “We’re also having lots of individual conversations with companies that are letting us know to expect future layoffs.”
He added, “So for me, there is more reason to be pessimistic about the labor market than optimistic we’ll see some major bounce back.”
Here are three charts that could point to a serious downturn in the U.S. job market.
Fewer workers are getting hired
Overall, U.S. employers in 2025 have added fewer jobs on a monthly basis compared with the pace of gains in recent years, when companies sought to expand as the economy roared back from the pandemic. In 2024, employers hired an average of 168,000 workers each month, but that has slowed to an average of 35,000 over the past three months, Powell said on Friday.
The risk is that the labor market could weaken from here, which could lead to “sharply higher layoffs and rising unemployment,” Powell said.
The slowdown could spur the Fed to cut its benchmark interest rate, policymakers’ main tool for energizing the economy and job growth, at its meeting next month for the first time since December 2024. Lowering rates could bolster the labor market because it would make it cheaper for consumers to borrow, driving spending, for businesses to invest, including by adding workers.
More long-term job seekers
Another troubling sign is a recent surge in long-term job seekers, or people who have been searching for a job for more than 27 weeks. In July, about 1.8 million Americans had been looking for work for more than 27 weeks, a jump of about 64% from three years earlier and 20% from a year ago.
It may not get easier to find work anytime soon, given signs from employers that they intend to continue to cut jobs, Challenger said.
“Don’t take the summer off” from looking for new work, he advised job-hunters. “It’s hard to imagine a scenario where the labor market will be better in three to six months.”
A jump in unemployed young workers
At the same time, young workers are also having more trouble finding their first jobs, which has been blamed on everything from slowing economic activity this year to employers adopting artificial intelligence in place of entry-level workers.
To be sure, the nation’s unemployment rate remains low, at 4.2%. Yet that statistic is backward-looking, reflecting the labor market’s strength in previous months — it says little about economic conditions moving forward.
Meanwhile, for new college graduates the current job market amounts to “a perfect storm,” said career coach Tracey Newell.
“Companies are limiting new entry-level roles, and AI is replacing many traditional ‘starter’ jobs,” she added, noting that it isn’t unusual for employers these days to receive hundreds of job applications for a single position.
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