In Situ Investigations of Dust Above the Lunar Terminator at the Chang'E‐3 Landing Site in the Mare Imbrium

Abstract

It was suspected that the horizon glow observed over the lunar terminator was caused by electrostatically levitated dust particles, but do high concentrations of dust particles really exist over the lunar terminator? This is an important question that cannot be answered even today. In fact, no in situ investigations about the lunar dust have been conducted on lunar surface since Apollo. Here we first report in situ investigations of lunar dust at Chang'E‐3 (CE‐3) landing site using solar cell probe (SCP). The results show that, different from Apollo's observation, the short‐circuit current of SCP did not decrease sharply during the first several lunations except the first lunation, indicating the recently developed minimalist qualitative model of sunrise‐driven dust transport might not be applicable at the geologically young CE‐3 landing site. In addition, within detector's detection limit, no abrupt changes in dust concentration were observed above the sharp sunlight/shadow boundaries on lunar surface.

Dust release from cold ring particles as a mechanism of spoke formation in Saturn's rings

“…Note that, because this lower limit assumes 0.1 μm as a typical dust grain size and it is known that LHG dust has the order of 1 μm in size, the lower limits of LRO's observation must be much larger than 10 -11 g cm -2 . Also, the limit of detectable column mass of dust is 2.46×10 -6 g cm -2 in the case of the Chang'E-3 mission (Li et al 2020). Therefore, instrument abilities of the LRO and Chang'E-3 are insufficient to detect LHG observed by Apollo 17, and therefore there is no contradiction between the observations of the Apollo missions and the results of LRO and Chang'E-3.…”

Пылевые Звуковые Солитоны В Плазме Запыленной Экзосферы Луны

“…В последние годы во всем мире усиливается интерес к исследованиям Луны. Особенно следует отметить успехи КНР в развитии лунных программ (см., например, [1]). Исследования процессов, протекающих на поверхности Луны, также крайне важны, особенно ввиду предстоящих российских лунных миссий, таких как " Луна-25", " Луна-26", " Луна-27" (см., например, [2]) и т. д. Особый интерес представляют процессы, связанные с наличием пылевых частиц в экзосфере Луны [3].…”