The AMARIS Lunar Rover 

BLUECUBE Aerospace and the Wolfpack CubeSat Development Team are focused on future lunar exploration and is developing the AMARIS lunar rover based on CubeSat technology. The goal of the AMARIS mission is to evaluate techniques for reducing the negative impacts of dust accumulation on rover solar panels and frames. Lunar dust is believed to have toxic properties that can affect people and machines. This dust adhesion problem was widely reported during the Apollo era missions and still exists today. The experiment from which this paper is based investigates how electric and magnetic fields may be used to mitigate this problem. A vacuum dust-box was designed, composed of 5 mm thick Lexan sheets in which flight-grade photovoltaic panels and anodized aluminum chassis components were subjected to regolith simulant. The goal is to determine if there is a feasible solution to mitigate the dust build up that occurs in space. The knowledge gained from

this experiment will be used in designing a 1U lunar rover in the near future.