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Area of Science:

  • Planetary Science
  • Lunar Volatiles
  • Spacecraft-Environment Interactions

Background:

  • Spacecraft operations, particularly powered landings, act as volatile release experiments on airless bodies.
  • Understanding the dispersal and persistence of these released volatiles is crucial for mission planning and interpreting scientific measurements.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate the transport and fate of water vapor released during a nominal lunar landing using numerical simulations.
  • To assess the potential for contamination of lunar cold traps by spacecraft exhaust.
  • To determine the sensitivity of exospheric evolution and deposition patterns to critical parameters like desorption activation energy.

Main Methods:

  • Numerical simulations of water vapor transport during a lunar landing and for two subsequent lunar days.
  • Modeling exospheric evolution and surface deposition patterns.

Main Results:

  • Spacecraft exhaust water vapor is globally redistributed, with significant amounts reaching polar permanently shadowed regions (cold traps).
  • Exospheric evolution and deposition are highly sensitive to desorption activation energy.
  • Contamination of cold traps is likely to scale with exhaust mass and landing site proximity to the poles.

Conclusions:

  • Spacecraft exhaust propagation is a widespread and long-lived impact on airless bodies, requiring consideration in mission planning.
  • Measurements during future missions can constrain critical parameters like lunar surface "stickiness" (desorption activation energy).
  • Understanding these impacts is vital for interpreting lunar measurements and studying the origin and distribution of lunar water.