This paper shows how the exposure of the Moon to the Earth's plasmasheet is subject to decadal variations due to lunar precession. The latter is a key property of the Moon's apparent orbit around the Earth - the nodes of that orbit precess around the ecliptic, completing one revolution every 18.6 years. This precession is responsible for a number of astronomical phenomena, e.g. the year to year drift of solar and lunar eclipse periods. It also controls the ecliptic latitude at which the Moon crosses the magnetotail and thus the number and duration of lunar encounters with the plasmasheet. This paper presents a detailed model of those encounters and applies it to the period 1960 to 2030. This shows that the total lunar exposure to the plasmasheet will vary from 10 hours per month at a minimum of the eighteen-year cycle rising to 40 hours per month at the maximum. These variations could have a profound impact on the accumulation of charge due plasmasheet electrons impacting the lunar surface. Thus we should expect the level of lunar surface charging to vary over the eighteen-year cycle. The literature contains reports that support this: several observations made during the cycle maximum of 1994-2000 are attributed to bombardment and charging of the lunar surface by plasmasheet electrons. Thus we conclude that lunar surface charging will vary markedly over an eighteen-year cycle driven by lunar precession. It is important to interpret lunar environment measurements in the context of this cycle and to allow for the cycle when designing equipment for deployment on the lunar surface. This is particularly important in respect of developing plans for robotic exploration on the lunar surface during the next cycle maximum of 2012-19.
Deep Dive into Modelling long-term trends in lunar exposure to the Earths plasmasheet.
This paper shows how the exposure of the Moon to the Earth’s plasmasheet is subject to decadal variations due to lunar precession. The latter is a key property of the Moon’s apparent orbit around the Earth - the nodes of that orbit precess around the ecliptic, completing one revolution every 18.6 years. This precession is responsible for a number of astronomical phenomena, e.g. the year to year drift of solar and lunar eclipse periods. It also controls the ecliptic latitude at which the Moon crosses the magnetotail and thus the number and duration of lunar encounters with the plasmasheet. This paper presents a detailed model of those encounters and applies it to the period 1960 to 2030. This shows that the total lunar exposure to the plasmasheet will vary from 10 hours per month at a minimum of the eighteen-year cycle rising to 40 hours per month at the maximum. These variations could have a profound impact on the accumulation of charge due plasmasheet electrons impacting the lunar sur
The growing interest in lunar exploration necessitates a better understanding of the operating environment at the lunar surface. A key element in that environment is the charging of the lunar surface and the resulting electrodynamic environment on and just above the surface.
There is growing observational evidence that the lunar surface can acquire negative potentials of several kilovolts (i.e. relative to the potential some Debye lengths above the surface) when exposed to strong fluxes of energetic electrons. Such potentials are a threat to operation of devices on the surface and may play an important role in dust transport. One important source of energetic electrons is Earth’s plasmasheet, which the Moon sometimes encounters around the time of Full Moon. In this paper we adapt existing models of the plasmasheet and the Moon’s orbit to explore how the plasmasheet moves with respect to the Moon. We then estimate the likelihood of Moon-plasmasheet encounters and show, for the first time, that this is strongly modulated over an 18 year cycle, driven by the precession of the Moon’s orbit. This modulation is consistent with existing observations and is an important context for interpreting those observations. The specification of the lunar charging environment must take account of the 18-year cycle and in particular include awareness of high-risk periods when encounters are highly likely -the next being in 2012-19.
The Moon has a complex orbit because it is subject to two strong gravitational forcesnamely those of the Earth and the Sun. The latter is the stronger (by factor 2) so the Moon should be considered to orbit the Sun but in an orbit that is strongly perturbed by the Earth.
As a result the Moon appears to orbit the Earth with a synodic period of 29.6 days, giving us the familiar monthly cycle of lunar phases. This cycle takes the Moon through the tail of Earth’s magnetosphere for 4 or 5 days around the time of Full Moon. During this period it may encounter the tail plasmasheet and thus be exposed to the energetic electrons that are often found there.
The likelihood of such encounters is determined by the Moon’s track across the tail (which is around Xgse = -60 Re) and the position of the plasmasheet in that region. As outlined in Figure 1 both phenomena are extended in Ygse direction, so what is critical in determining encounters is their relative location in the Zgse direction:
• The Moon’s Z location varies over the course of a year due to the inclination of its orbit with respect to the plane of the ecliptic. The amplitude in Zgse is roughly iRm, where Rm is the distance to the Moon (60 Re) and i is the inclination of the Moon’s orbit (5.15°).
Thus the amplitude is 60×5.15×π/180 = 5.5 Re.
• The plasmasheet Z location also varies over the course of the year, this time due to the annual variation of ±23.4 degrees in dipole tilt (we neglect diurnal change here, but include it in the full model below). This annual variation arises because the near-Earth tail magnetic field is aligned with the internal dipole but the more distant tail is aligned with the solar wind (i.e. parallel to the plane of ecliptic). The transition between these two regimes lies around X=-10 Re. The result is that the distant plasmasheet behaves as if it lies parallel to the plane of the ecliptic but is attached to a hinge in the plane of geodipole equator at R=10 Re (see Figure 2). Thus the plasmasheet moves in Zgse with an annual amplitude of 10 sin(23.4°) = 4.0 Re. These two phenomena have similar amplitudes, so the likelihood of Moon-plasmasheet encounters will be determined by their relative phases. The phase of the plasmasheet motion is synchronised with the seasons, since the annual variation of geodipole tilt is a simple consequence of the annual motion of the Earth’s rotation axis with respect to the Sun. But the phase of the Moon’s Z location varies steadily from year to year as a result of the precession of the Moon’s orbit (which completes one revolution every 18.6 years).
Thus the encounter likelihood will vary from year to year as a result of this 18.6 year cycle.
This cycle is therefore a critical context for interpreting observations of lunar surface charging and for assessing the risk that charging presents to lunar exploration activities. It is important to understand the cycle in detail and therefore we have undertaken a detailed study of Moonplasmasheet encounters using up-to-date models of both phenomena.
The encounters were modelled by tracking the movement of the Moon using a standard tool that gives its position in inertial coordinates. This position was then converted to an appropriate magnetospheric coordinate system so we could determine when it was in or close to the tail region. In these cases we then estimated the distance of the Moon from the magnetic neutral sheet that separates the two lobes of the tail. The Moon was considered to be in the plasmasheet if within a distance ΔZ of neutral sh
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