Related papers: Tall Towers on the Moon
We investigate the possibility that the Moon develops an electric potential originating from the impinging particles on the Moon from cosmic rays and solar wind. The investigation includes all experimental data of the flux of charged…
Multiple nations are planning activity on the Moon's surface, and to deconflict lunar operations we must understand the sandblasting damage from rocket exhaust blowing soil. Prior research disagreed over the scaling of the erosion rate,…
Photosynthesis offers a convenient means of sustaining biospheres. We quantify the constraints for photosynthesis to be functional on the permanent nightside of tidally locked rocky exoplanets via reflected light from their exomoons. We…
The applicability of the linear theory of elasticity to the Moon has been studied. As a criterion was taken the smallness of the strain tensor. The elastic moduli are obtained from the data of the project "Apollo". The pressure was…
Magic squares have been well explored here on Earth [1], but there appears to have been little-to-no examination of $\textit{lunar}$ magic squares. Some kinds of magic squares exist on the moon (i.e. under lunar arithmetic) but not on Earth…
Recent high-precision measurements of the isotopic composition of lunar rocks demonstrate that the bulk silicate Earth and the Moon show an unexpectedly high degree of similarity. This is inconsistent with one of the primary results of…
A significant step in space exploration during the 21st century will be human settlement on Mars. Instead of transporting all the construction materials from Earth to the red planet with incredibly high cost, using Martian soil to construct…
As NASA prepares to carry out its Artemis lunar missions, the design and planning of robust power systems tailored to the lunar environment become necessary and urgent. Solar photovoltaic (PV) systems are among the most suitable power…
The variation of remotely sensed neutron count rates is measured as a function of cratercentric distance using data from the Lunar Prospector Neutron Spectrometer. The count rate, stacked over many craters, peaks over the crater centre, has…
The Moon's permanently shadowed regions (PSRs) are among the coldest places in the Solar System and are expected to become key landing sites for upcoming international space agency missions. Their proximity to peaks of perpetual solar power…
Earthshine is the dominant source of natural illumination on the surface of the Moon during lunar night, and at locations within permanently shadowed regions that never receive direct sunlight. As such, earthshine may enable the exploration…
For a sustained human presence on the Moon, robust in-situ resource utilisation supply chains to provide consumables and propellant are necessary. A promising process is molten salt electrolysis, which typically requires temperatures in…
We address the thermal history of the Earth after the Moon-forming impact, taking tidal heating and thermal blanketing by the atmosphere into account. The atmosphere sets an upper bound of ~100 W/m^2 on how quickly the Earth can cool. The…
The Earth-Moon system is unusual in several respects. The Moon is roughly 1/4 the radius of the Earth - a larger satellite-to-planet size ratio than all known satellites other than Pluto's Charon. The Moon has a tiny core, perhaps with only…
Following a technique of Galileo we compute the height on a mountain on the Moon. It is based on a simple observation that precisely on a half Moon day, the Earth, the Moon, and the Sun form the vertices of a right triangle with the Moon at…
Perhaps the biggest hurdle to mankind's expansion throughout the Solar System is the prohibitive cost of escaping Earth's gravitational pull. In its many forms, the space-elevator provides a way to circumvent this cost, allowing payloads to…
Space weathering is an important surface process occurring on the Moon and other airless bodies, especially those that have no magnetic field. The optical effects of the Moon's space weathering have been largely investigated in the…
Beyond space exploration, the next critical step towards living and working in space requires developing a space economy. One important challenge with this space-economy is ensuring the low-cost transport of raw materials from one…
A tensegrity tower design to support a given payload for the moon mining operation is proposed in this paper. A non-linear optimization problem for the minimal-mass structure design is posed and solved, subject to the yielding constraints…
With most planets and planetary candidates detected in the stellar habitable zone (HZ) being super-Earths and gas giants, rather than Earth-like planets, we naturally wonder if their moons could be habitable. The first detection of such an…