Tributes To Brian:

Clive Neal
Professor of Planetary Geology
University of Notre Dame

Fellow Lunatics: I regret to inform you that another Apollo era icon has left us. Brian’s passion for the Moon and lunar dust has left an indelible impression on our community. I had the honor to visit with him in Perth a few years ago and me him and his good lady wife - I hope I have his level of passion for the Moon and my science when I reach that stage of my life. Personally, I will miss his no-messing and direct interactions, and his phone calls. For those of you who never met Brian, his website can be found here. Ad luna, Brian! And thank you. Clive

Kirby Daniel Runyon
Senior Staff Scientist, Planetary Geology & Exploration Johns HopkinsUniversity

Sorry to hear that. I saw him in person in Feb. during the lunar dust workshop at LPI! I feel lucky to have at least been around him.

Bernard Foing
Executive Director of the international lunar exploration working group

We had memorable interactions with Brian O'Brien when he was presenting his historical experiment and more recent work at some events we organised in Europe and elsewhere. He was very passionate about the Moon and always reminded us not to forget about the dust ! Thank you Brian

Philip Metzger
PhD Planetary Scientist Florida Space Institute
University of Central Florida

I will miss Brian, too. I got to know him when he contacted NASA around 2007 or 2009 after finding Apollo data tapes in a cardboard box at his university in Australia. That triggered an emergency meeting inside NASA to decide what to do — Is it true: did Brian really find old Apollo tapes? Are they really the only surviving copies in existence? How do we even read such old tapes? How badly do we need the data? How do we respond to Brian? After that meeting, I called Brian because we DID need the data as we were planning the Constellation program.

Brian and I have had a long-running conversation ever since. He was a tireless champion of the Apollo Dust Detector Experiment (DDE) and its results. His original work during Apollo was prematurely shut down by NASA after someone decided dust “wasn’t a problem”, so he never did a fully detailed analysis of the DDE data until after his recent discovery of the tapes. That led to a distinctly separate, second period of productivity on lunar dust in his career. He was very late in life when that second phase began, but he had a lot of passion.

It was fascinating how much information he teased from those tapes. He correlated events in the data to Lunar Module Ascent Stage departure and to the sunrises over the next few lunations. With every new discovery he would call me and Jim Gaier and others to discuss what it meant.

I will mention that he made (what turned out to be) a controversial discovery of a “dust storm” that occurred with each of the first few sunrises after the crew's departure. I think this is controversial only because many have misunderstood his claim. He is not saying that “dust storms” are a regular and natural part of the lunar environment. Instead, he is saying that the mission itself mechanically disturbed the dust — boots, rover wheels, plume ejecta, etc. — and that put the dust into an unnatural state where it was not stabilized against electrostatic levitation. Then, it took several passages of the terminator for the dust to move around before it was resettled into a natural state again and stopped moving. His data showed that these “dust storms” tapered off quickly with each successive lunation. In fact, the fact that the storms were tapering actually confirms the belief that large-scale dust storms are not a regular part of the lunar environment. Instead, they are just a localized, mission-induced event. (By extension, they must also be an impact-generated event, so they would be natural after impacts, still localized and temporary.) Also, he is not saying the dust travels high above the surface, but rather about 1 meter high in the vicinity of the mission, according to the measurements of the DDE as the sun peeped up over the dust into the sensor.

It is of course possible his interpretation is wrong, but after reading his papers carefully and looking at the data he sent I am persuaded it is correct. I think Brian's discovery of these disturbance-generated, localized dust events will be one of the long-lasting things he bequeathed to lunar exploration. After we validate their existence via the upcoming missions, we will know that all our operations on the Moon will similarly disturb dust in a way that creates additional, small-scale, localized dust events with each terminator passage. That means we will need to design our hardware, operations, and science measurements to take them into account.

And of course the phenomenon (if real) needs to be named, so you can guess who I am thinking they should be named after.

Ad luna, Brian.

Phil

Harrison “Jack” Schmitt
APOLLO 17 Astronaut

Nicely said, Phil. Although Brian and I carried on a debate for many years about lunar dust levitation, I also will miss his passion in the course of that debate.

Jack

Rob Mueller
Swamp Works
NASA KSC

I met Brian at several conferences over the years and I can attest to his passion for the Moon and dust phenomena. He was trying to find a way to get funding to work on it but I think he worked on the data regardless.

Thank you Brian for all you did - time to pass the torch.

Best Regards,

Rob Mueller

Roberto Bugiolacchi
State Key Laboratory of Lunar and Planetary Sciences

3rd of January 2019, I post on this forum a little notice announcing the landing of the Chinese Chang'e-4 on the lunar farside. I am 'stationed' in Macao, Southern China.

My office phone has been untroubled by outside calls for years, but on that day, it rang. It's a distant call, crackling line in a way that brought back memories of dodgy landlines.

I heard a voice saying something like ... "I am Brian, I am Brian", and I thought it was a prank call at first. Then the caller introduced himself as a modest student candidate would: I did this, a bit of that, "Apollo" was mentioned, and to my immense ignorance, I still did not have a clue who this person was. But he was extremely polite, well-wishing, asking me many questions, why I was working there, etc. A very pleasant conversation. Soon after, I received an email from him with his seminal papers and his unpublished work. And then we talked about potential future collaborations and I stop here.

His modesty and humbleness were astonishing, typical of all the men and women of value I had the pleasure to meet in my life. On this forum, we heard accounts from close friends and collaborators who rightly shared incredible life stories and touching accounts. I understand my contribution to be marginal and fleeting. But the value of a person is often revealed more by little gestures than grand achievements.

I just wanted to share my encounter.

Roberto

Donald C. Barker
x-EMU Architecture Lead

I had the distinct pleasure of corresponding with Brian throughout 2019 regarding dust adhesion, which influenced one of my current projects for testing materials and stimulants for their adhesive characteristics. I will eventually be making some comparisons regarding his Apollo DDE experiment as he had suggested. I also had the pleasure of taking dinner with him and Ros the last night of the Dust conference in Houston in February. His enthusiasm at the meting was infectious. We appreciate your tenacity and exuberance in our lunar exploration endeavors. Best Wishes to Ros and their family.
Don Barker

Jim Gaier
NASA Scientist

It is with a heavy heart that I reflect on the life of Brian O’Brian, my colleague, collaborator, and friend. Although his passing was not totally unexpected, he had written to me a few times about his ongoing health struggles since returning to Australia of the LPI Dust Workshop in February, it was still a shock.

Anyone who knew Brian even casually could tell you he was not exactly a “go along to get along” kind of guy. Because of his high standards for data, he butted heads regularly with the prevailing opinions on the importance and interactions of lunar dust, and usually prevailed. This began early in his career when he insisted that he needed to be able to quantify the amount of dust in the lunar environment because it would affect the results of the CPLEE experiment. He designed a small, compact, simple instrument that became the Dust Detector Experiment (DDE) and convinced NASA to add it to several of the ALSEP packages – though in a modified form for all but Apollo 12. Those involved in instrument development can perhaps appreciate how difficult it would be to design, have built, and add a new instrument part way through a flight program. I think this was perhaps his proudest achievement, and data from these instruments became the starting point for all his future work on lunar dust.

He was also at odds with the establishment when the official science reports indicated, according to the DDE, that the launch of the ascent stage of the LEM did not result in changes in the dust environment. He wrote what was in essence a dissenting opinion, backed up with DDE measurements that was published in the Journal of Applied Physics, but was dismayed that it was nearly ignored by the community. Even at the last meeting he attended, he continued pushing to correct the official historical record.

His interest was reignited when he learned that his copies of Apollo data tapes were, after 40 years, perhaps the only ones left, and yet he could not acquire funding to have them restored and read. So with no outside funding support he began a long quest that resulted in a remarkable series of papers and presentations based on the analysis of the DDE data at high resolution. His insights have sparked controversy about the motion of lunar dust and how it is affected by lunar surface operations that has broad application not only for lunar exploration, but for the exploration of airless bodies everywhere.

Brian was a remarkable and meticulous scientist who did much of his best work at an age long after most of us retire. He is an inspiration to all who value rigorous science, and to those of us who think we are "over the hill". He will be missed.

Jim Gaier NASA Retired

Prof Brian J O'Brien  - NASA Principal Investigator - Lunar Dust Expert

Apollo astronauts had to overcome nine types of always troubling and sometimes dangerous effects of fine abrasive lunar dust (Gaier, James R., NASA/TM - 2005-213610/REV1, 2007) as their inescapable Number 1 environmental problem on the Moon and the only problem for which they had no training. The only measurements of movements of such dust were made by the matchbox-sized Apollo Dust Detector Experiments (DDEs) invented by Professor Brian  J. O'Brien on 12 January 1966 as a risk-management instrument before either the Soviet Union Luna 9 or the US Surveyor 1 had taken the photographs of lunar soil.

"Dust on the Moon has been a politically incorrect subject for more than 50 years but I know it is a delight to explore and a lunar window into the Extraterrestrial. Some difficulties arise perhaps because a very high proportion of geologists in lunar science find dust a nuisance for various reasons (see Publications O'Brien, B.J., 2012, “Apollo measurements of lunar dust amidst geology priorities”, Australian Journal of Earth Sciences, 59, pp. 307-320). Administrators and engineers in 1965 grew and generalised mindsets from neglect of a caveat in "dismissal" of the importance of lunar dust (see NASA Oral History of Noel Hinners, August 2010). 

Here in this website, my hope is to communicate and share delights, and provide the global community during this 50th Anniversary celebration a resource for accurate measurement-based reports about movements of fine dust on the Moon. 

O'Brien's original invention proposed to NASA in January 1966, attached a tiny bead-like thermometer on the back of each cell. This is the only Apollo experiment measuring both cause and effect of dust heating spacesuits and equipment, jamming zippers and increasing friction-like effects on moving parts, common problems on each Apollo mission.