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Updated: Sep 2, 2026

Simulating Imaging of Large Scale Radio Arrays on the Lunar Surface
Published on: July 30, 2020
Gardening on the Moon: An Advection-Diffusion Model to Guide the Search for Supernova Debris in the Lunar Regolith
Emily S Costello1, John Ellis2, Brian D Fields3
1University of Hawaii at Mānoa, Hawaii Institute of Geophysics and Planetology, Honolulu, Hawaii 96822, USA.
Abstract:
The vertical redistribution of materials in the lunar regolith-ranging from continuously produced space-weathering products to sporadic pulses of supernova- or kilonova-derived isotopes-remains a fundamental problem in planetary science. We present a unified stochastic model of regolith gardening induced by the impact flux. Treating gardening as a competition between impact-driven advection and diffusion predicts the maturity profiles of Apollo cores over more than 2 orders of magnitude in time (1.4×10^{7} to 4.5×10^{8} yr). This model describes well the depth profiles of live ^{60}Fe in Apollo regolith samples, suggesting that supernova dust capture is independent of native iron abundance, and is consistent with a uniform influx at the latitudes of the Apollo landing sites. We extend our model to predict lunar signals for live r-process species that might originate from supernovae or kilonovae: ^{244}Pu tied to terrestrial detections, and ^{129}I, ^{182}Hf, and ^{247}Cm based on r-process calculations. The ^{244}Pu/^{60}Fe depth profile can probe the origin of ^{244}Pu, motivating searches in Artemis regolith samples down to depths O(100) cm.
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