Constraining low-altitude lunar dust using the LADEE-UVS data

TL;DR

This study uses LADEE-UVS data to set upper limits on low-altitude lunar dust density, improving understanding of the Moon's dust environment near the surface.

Contribution

It provides the first remote-sensing constraints on lunar dust density within a few kilometers of the surface using UV spectra.

Findings

Upper limit on dust particle density is 142 m^{-3} for specific size distribution.

Spectral filtering techniques effectively remove instrumental signals.

Constraints improve understanding of lunar dust environment near the surface.

Abstract

Studying lunar dust is vital to the exploration of the Moon and other airless planetary bodies. The Ultraviolet and Visible Spectrometer (UVS) on board the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) 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 $m^{-3}$.