Related papers: PyNAPLE: Lunar Surface Impact Crater Detection
Onboard localization capabilities for planetary rovers to date have used relative navigation, by integrating combinations of wheel odometry, visual odometry, and inertial measurements during each drive to track position relative to the…
The Moon is generally thought to have formed from the debris ejected by the impact of a planet-sized object with the proto-Earth towards the end of planetary accretion. Modeling of the impact process predicts that the lunar material was…
In the companion paper ("Erosion rate of lunar soil under a landing rocket, part 1: identifying the rate-limiting physics", this issue) an equation was developed for the rate that lunar soil erodes under the exhaust of a landing rocket.…
This article describes the characterization activities of the landing sites currently envisaged for the Lunar Lander mission of the European Space Agency. These sites have been identified in the South Pole Region (-85{\deg} to -90{\deg}…
In the leading theory of lunar formation, known as the giant impact hypothesis, a collision between two planet-size objects resulted in a young Earth surrounded by a circumplanetary debris disk from which the Moon later accreted. The range…
Impact crater counts on the Saturnian satellites are a key element for estimating their surface ages and placing constraints on their impactor population. The Cassini mission radar observations allowed crater counts to be made on the…
There is now solid experimental evidence of at least one supernova explosion within 100 pc of Earth within the last few million years, from measurements of the short-lived isotope 60Fe in widespread deep-ocean samples, as well as in the…
Giant impacts by comets and asteroids have probably had an important influence on terrestrial biological evolution. We know of around 180 high velocity impact craters on the Earth with ages up to 2400Myr and diameters up to 300km. Some…
The erosion of lunar soil by rocket exhaust plumes is investigated experimentally. This has identified the diffusion-driven flow in the bulk of the sand as an important but previously unrecognized mechanism for erosion dynamics. It has also…
When launching or landing a spacecraft on the regolith of a terrestrial surface, special attention needs to be paid to the rocket exhaust cratering effects. If the effects are not controlled, the rocket cratering could damage the spacecraft…
NELIOTA is a new ESA activity launched at the National Observatory of Athens in February 2015 aiming to determine the distribution and frequency of small near-earth objects (NEOs) via lunar monitoring. The project involves upgrading the…
The Moon holds important clues to the early evolution of the Solar System. Some 50 impact basins (crater diameter D>300 km) have been recognized on the lunar surface, implying that the early impact flux was much higher than it is now. The…
The Constellation Project's planned return to the moon requires numerous landings at the same site. Since the top few centimeters are loosely packed regolith, plume impingement from the Lander ejects the granular material at high…
The Lunar Laser Ranging (LLR) experiment has accumulated 50 years of range data of improving accuracy from ground stations to the laser retroreflector arrays (LRAs) on the lunar surface. The upcoming decade offers several opportunities to…
We present a study on the relationship between the ratio of the depth of a crater to its diameter and the diameter for lunar craters both on the maria and on the highlands. We consider craters younger than 1.1 billion years in age, i.e. of…
An incident fast ion in the electronic stopping regime produces a track of excitations which can lead to particle ejection and cratering. Molecular Dynamics simulations of the evolution of the deposited energy were used to study the…
We propose a novel way to search for feebly interacting massive particles, exploiting two properties of systems involving collisions between high energy electrons and intense laser pulses. The first property is that the…
Despite the discovery of thousands of exoplanets, no exomoons have been detected so far. We test a recently developed method for exomoon search, the orbital sampling effect (OSE), using the full exoplanet photometry from the Kepler Space…
The Lunar Geophysical Network (LGN) mission is proposed to land on the Moon in 2030 and deploy packages at four locations to enable geophysical measurements for 6-10 years. Returning to the lunar surface with a long-lived geophysical…
This study introduces a data-driven approach using machine learning (ML) techniques to explore and predict albedo anomalies on the Moon's surface. The research leverages diverse planetary datasets, including high-spatial-resolution albedo…