For years, NASA scientists have studied just how much damage that dust, along with lunar gravel and rocks, could cause, particularly when it gets kicked up by rocket engines and starts jetting about at speeds faster than a bullet.“This is sandblasting, damaging; it’s rocks at high velocity, sand grains, high-velocity gravel.” One of the foremost institutions studying lunar dust and its potential effect on human missions is the Swamp Works, a NASA research lab co-founded in 2013 by Metzger, who is now retired from the agency but still collaborates on some projects.Based at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center in a boxy building once used to train Apollo astronauts, the lab aims to rapidly pioneer and test technologies that would allow humans to live and work on other planetary bodies.To really get a sense of the problem — and find ways to combat it — the lab trucked in 120 tons of fine, ash-gray powder that was left over from a quarry’s road pavement production line.At the Swamp Works, the simulated moon dust is now housed in a plastic enclosure, 26 feet long and 26 feet wide, where researchers test robotic diggers designed to excavate lunar dirt and rocks and model how far rocket engines will spew moon dust during takeoff and landing."