Question: What materials do you use to stop dust in space from sticking to the camera lense?

Ryan Smith answered on 10 Jun 2019:

Great question! It is a weird thing to think about but it is less of a problem than you would imagine.

Firstly there is nowhere near as much dust in space as there is on Earth, and we thoroughly clean everything before we send it up to space.

Dust tends to stick to things on Earth because of gravity, it floats slowly towards the ground and just stays there, and is easily disturbed. In space there is no gravity, so the dust never settles (there is gravity but you don’t feel it). Everything in space it usually travelling at different speeds so it doesn’t ever settle on a lense. The only things that will be travelling the same speed as the camera will be things we sent up with it, and we cleaned it of dust before lift off.

The most difficult thing is when that cosmic dust hits the spacecraft at really high speeds, but that very rarely happens, and there is some good techniques to minimise the chances, like putting it in a long tube. Plus the materials are very durable.

Great question!