Constraining Low-Altitude Lunar Dust Using the LADEE-UVS Data

Studying lunar dust is vital to the exploration of the Moon and other airless planetary bodies. The Ultraviolet and Visible Spectrometer on board the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer spacecraft conducted a series of Almost Limb activities to look for dust near the dawn terminator region. During these activities the instrument stared at a fixed point in the zodiacal background off the Moon's limb while the spacecraft moved in retrograde orbit from the sunlit to the unlit side of the Moon. The spectra obtained from these activities probe altitudes within a few kilometers of the Moon's surface, a region whose dust populations were not well constrained by previous remote-sensing observations from orbiting spacecraft. Filtering these spectra to remove a varying instrumental signal enables constraints to be placed on potential signals from a dust atmosphere. These filtered spectra are compared with those predicted for dust atmospheres with various exponential scale heights and particle size distributions to yield upper limits on the dust number density for these potential populations. For a differential size distribution proportional to s(-3) (where s is the particle size) and a scale height of 1 km, we obtain an upper limit on the number density of dust particles at the Moon's surface of 142 m(-3).

Automated summary

Studying lunar dust is crucial for exploring the Moon and other airless planetary bodies. By using a spectrometer on board the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer spacecraft, constraints can be placed on the number density of dust particles near the lunar surface, aiding in further research.