Phenomenology of soil erosion due to rocket exhaust on the Moon and the Mauna Kea lunar test site

Abstract

The soil‐blowing phenomena observed in the Apollo lunar missions have not previously been described in the literature in sufficient detail to elucidate the physical processes and to support the development of physics‐based modeling of the plume effects. In part, this is because previous laboratory experiments have used overly simplistic model soils that fail to produce many of the phenomena seen in lunar landings, some of which therefore went unrecognized. Here, the Apollo descent videos, terrain photography, and ascent videos are interpreted with the assistance of field experiments using a more complex regolith. Rocket thruster firings were performed upon the tephra of a lunar test site on Mauna Kea in Hawaii. This tephra possesses embedded rocks, large fractions of gravel and dust, some cohesion, and natural geological lamination. This produced more realistic plume phenomenology. The relevant phenomena include the relationship of dust liberation with overall soil erosion rate, terrain bed forms created by the plume, dust tails associated with the exhumation and blowing of rocks, bed load transport, the removal of discrete layers of soil hypothesized to be the stratigraphic units corresponding to impact events, the total mass of ejected soil during a landing, and the brightening of the regolith around the landing site. This analysis provides insight into the erosion processes and nature of the regolith. This paper also synthesizes theory, experiment, simulation, and observational data to produce a clearer picture of the physical processes of lunar soil erosion.

A qualitative study of the retention and release of volatile gases in JSC-1A lunar soil simulant at room temperature under ultrahigh vacuum (UHV) conditions

“…Based on the promised armada of spacecraft returning to the Moon, it would seem prudent to make sentinel missions to the lunar surface a priority to enable better understanding and documentation of that environment after a more than 40-year absence of any in situ analytical chemical instrumentation. Such sentinel missions could very well capture portions of the paleo-cosmic record of the inner Solar System (McKay, 2008;Fries et al, 2011;Curran et al, 2013), and document that innate record before its scientific integrity is irreparably compromised (Billings and Runyan, 2011;Metzger et al, 2011).…”

Final review of analog field campaigns for In Situ Resource Utilization technology and capability maturation

“…Sintering surface pads using two different methods. Firing a liquid oxygen/methane thruster (with oxygen produced In Situ) onto unprepared and sintered surfaces to evaluate plume effects on the surface (Metzger et al, 2011).…”

Comparing Rocket Exhaust Effects across Lunar Landing Sites Using LRO Narrow Angle Camera images

“…Our previous studies using NAC photometry of the Apollo, Luna, and Surveyor sites concluded that smoothing and destruction of finescale surface structure and/or redistribution of fine particles likely created the increased reflectance seen at the landing sites (Clegg et al, 2014a). Details on how the exhaust plume interacts with lunar regolith can be found in Metzger et al (2011) and Clegg et al (2014a). Here we compare the reflectance changes at these landing sites with those seen at the recent Chang'e 3 landing site and assess how lander mass and thrust affect the size of disturbed areas at each landing site.…”