P054-0015
Understanding the Formation of the Lunar Dust Ejecta Cloud

Monday, 14 December 2020
Poster
Edwin Bernardoni, University of Colorado Boulder, Department of Physics, Boulder, CO, United States, Mihaly Horanyi, University of Colorado, Physics Department, Boulder, CO, United States and Jamey R Szalay, Princeton University, Department of Astrophysical Sciences, Princeton, NJ, United States
Abstract:
The Lunar Dust Experiment (LDEX) on-board the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) mission observed from 9/2014 to 4/2015 a dynamic and permanently present dust cloud around the Moon produced by continual meteoroid bombardment. Through the implementation of a forward modeling approach using a two-dimensional single plume ejecta model, it was revealed that this dust environment is sensitive to meteoroid showers.

The sporadic background contribution to the impacting dust flux is dominated by helion (HE), apex (AP), and antihelion (AH) sources oscillating with lunar phase. An estimate for the flux ratio of HE to AH sources was derived as well as the initial mass, speed, and angle from surface normal distributions of the ejecta. The speed distribution, however, was recently improved to account for the correlation between local time and altitude of the sampling.

Using these improved distributions, a three-dimensional model was implemented to estimate the inner and outer ejecta cone angles from LDEX plume measurements. Expanding upon this single plume model and the derived ejecta cone angles, we will implement a global lunar model fitted to LDEX measurements of the sporadic background to constrain the product of meteoroid impactor fluxes and ejecta mass yield per source.

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