This is a story about dust. Dust that can mold into the shape of an astronaut’s boot and remain unchanged for millennia. Dust that cuts like glass. Dust so fine that it brings billion-dollar machines to their pneumatic knees. Moondust. For Jason Schuler, a robotics engineer at NASA’s Swamp Works, in Florida, it’s an obsession. He works on machines that can extract, pulverize, mold, analyze, and protect against extraterrestrial dirt.

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