The Exosphere as a Boundary: Origin and Evolution of Airless Bodies in the Inner Solar System and Beyond Including Planets with Silicate Atmospheres

Abstract

In this review we discuss all the relevant solar/stellar radiation and plasma parameters and processes that act together in the formation and modification of atmospheres and exospheres that consist of surface-related minerals. Magma ocean degassed silicate atmospheres or thin gaseous envelopes from planetary building blocks, airless bodies in the inner Solar System, and close-in magmatic rocky exoplanets such as CoRot-7b, HD 219134 b and 55 Cnc e are addressed. The depletion and fractionation of elements from planetary embryos, which act as the building blocks for proto-planets are also discussed. In this context the formation processes of the Moon and Mercury are briefly reviewed. The Lunar surface modification since its origin by micrometeoroids, plasma sputtering, plasma impingement as well as chemical surface alteration and the search of particles from the early Earth’s atmosphere that were collected by the Moon on its surface are also discussed. Finally, we address important questions on what can be learned from the study of Mercury’s environment and its solar wind interaction by MESSENGER and BepiColombo in comparison with the expected observations at exo-Mercurys by future space-observatories such as the JWST or ARIEL and ground-based telescopes and instruments like SPHERE and ESPRESSO on the VLT, and vice versa.

Takeout and Delivery: Erasing the Dusty Signature of Late-stage Terrestrial Planet Formation

“…In the solar system, evidence for the moon-forming impact (e.g., Asphaug et al 2021;Canup et al 2021, and references therein) and analyses of elemental abundances in Venus, Earth, and Mars (e.g., Lammer et al 2021Lammer et al , 2022 and references therein) provide strong incentive for the role of giant impacts in the evolution of at least one planetary system. However, this evolutionary history may be rare if most planetary systems form their terrestrial planets early, in the nebular phase.…”

Takeout and Delivery: Erasing the Dusty Signature of Late-stage Terrestrial Planet Formation

“…In the Solar System, evidence for the moon-forming impact (e.g., Asphaug et al 2021;Canup et al 2021, and references therein) and analyses of elemental abundances in Venus, Earth, and Mars (e.g., Lammer et al 2021Lammer et al , 2022, and references therein) provide strong incentive for the role of giant impacts in the evolution of at least one planetary system. However, this evolutionary history may be rare if most planetary systems form their terrestrial planets early, in the nebular phase.…”

Space plasma physics science opportunities for the lunar orbital platform - Gateway

“…But, most important, the lunar environment offers a unique opportunity to study the Moon surface-bounded exosphere (Figure 2), its production mechanisms, its dynamics, its interaction with the solar wind and with the terrestrial magnetotail plasma, and its escape into space (Potter et al, 2000;Wurz et al, 2007;Futaana et al, 2008;Leblanc and Chaufray, 2011;Lammer et al, 2022;Wurz et al, 2022). The LADEE (Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer) and LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter) observations have provided a glimpse of the complexity of the lunar exosphere and of the associated physical mechanisms (Stern et al, 2013;Elphic et al, 2014;Benna et al, 2015;Hodges, 2016;Hurley et al, 2016).…”

“…The analysis of implanted particles on the lunar surface, that originated from the Earth's atmosphere, will also provide some knowledge of Earth's early atmosphere (Marty et al, 2003;Ozima et al, 2005;Lammer et al, 2018;Lammer et al, 2022). It is expected that early Earth's atmosphere experienced strong escape of hydrogen, oxygen and carbon, that originated from the dissociation of water and methane molecules, and of nitrogen due to the increased EUV flux from the young Sun (Lammer et al, 2018;Zahnle et al, 2019;Gebauer et al, 2020;Kislyakova et al, 2020;Johnstone et al, 2021).…”