Texas student wins $25,000 for invention targeting hazardous Moon dust

Jiaen Jiang - Student Researcher in Aerospace, PC: LinkedIn Jiaen Jiang, a 16-year-old student from Rosenberg, Texas, has won a $25,000 Davidson Fellows Scholarship for an engineering project designed to capture fine lunar dust before it enters future Moon habitats. Jiang's project, called the Moondust Magnet, uses a bipolar interdigitated electrode array to create controlled electric fields that can attract and capture both charged and neutral particles of lunar regolith. The system is intended for use inside habitat airlocks, where dust carried in on astronauts' suits and equipment could otherwise enter the living area and reach primary filtration systems. Jiang has demonstrated the concept through benchtop experiments using lunar dust simulants. She was also one of five finalists selected by the 2025-26 MIT THINK programme from 1,042 applications, according to MIT's results document. The Davidson Institute describes the scholarship as one of the nation's most prestigious honours for students aged 18 and under.Lunar dust could pose a health problem on future Moon missionsLunar regolith is the loose layer of soil and fragmented rock covering the Moon's surface. Its fine particles ...