Why the Center for Lunar Research?

The Center for Lunar Research (CLR) was established in 1998 by the National Space Society in response to a de-emphasis by NASA on its lunar exploration program, decreasing government funding for lunar data analysis, and an NSS policy survey that identified lunar applications and development as a priority issue among our membership. NSS’s goal is that the Center for Lunar Research be considered one of the centers of excellence for lunar data interpretation; we plan to create a virtual institute which would be regarded as the internet site to find information on the latest lunar research data.

Since its inception the Center has followed a three-year development plan which has included: the establishment of and Advisory Panel, consisting of Alan Binder, Harrison H. Schmitt, George French and Frederick I. Ordway; offering annual summer scholarships to students working on Lunar Prospector and Clementine data interpretation; and plans to open a Virtual Institute for research exchange and data set access.

The Lunar Prospector and Clementine missions' data provided the fundamental building blocks for the NSS agenda of support of commercial lunar habitation. For example, Lunar Prospector gave us high quality, low altitude mapping of the Moon's surface composition, magnetic fields, gravity field and detected the presence of significant quantities of hydrogen, strongly suggesting the presence of water at the lunar North and South Poles.

Unfortunately the strategy for further reduction and analysis of data from these missions is neither comprehensive nor adequately funded. To manage the millions of bits of code that could translate this suite of information into enhanced understanding of the origin, evolution, and resource availability requires a major commitment of time, effort, and funding. Data reduction will allow commercial ventures to assess potential returns on investment of lunar economic activity, which, once modeled for the Moon, can be a prototype for other planets.

An Update on the Activities of the Center for Lunar Research

During the summer months of 2000, NSS funding allowed Josh Cahill to partake in studies prior to his enrollment at the University of Tennessee for a M.S. degree. Studies performed involved joining the effort initiated by the Lunar Soil Characterization Consortium (LSCC) to bridge the gap between petrology and remote sensing techniques. Such knowledge will be imperative for continuing planetary research and economic insitu resource utilization (INSRU) evaluation of airless bodies (e.g. Moon, Phobos, and Eros). Research involved the characterization of the <45 mm fraction of the lunar Highland soils with the program FeatureScan^Ó. This task was initiated because the <45 mm fraction of the soil dominates the reflectance spectrum and determination of these surface compositions remotely becomes more difficult in more heavily impacted areas of the lunar surface. Remote sensing problems with these soils include lower albedo (surface brightness) and lower spectral contrast (the degree to which an absorption feature can be observed in a reflectance spectrum)(e.g. Pieters, 1978). Therefore, modal information gathered is paramount for accurate calibrations of spectral reflectance measurements. Work accomplished towards this goal was the evaluation of FeatureScan^Ó qualitative analysis parameters to characterize lunar soils more accurately and to correlate data with quantitative electron-microprobe analyses. A few short publications have resulted from this work. Josh is continuing research towards this pursuit with the LSCC. Other current and future contributions involve research with lunar meteorites, specifically Dh-025. Josh plans to finish his M.S. degree in December 2002 and begin Ph.D. studies shortly thereafter.

During the summer months of 1999, scholarships were awarded to three students:  Michael J. Zalewski, Matthew J. Malecki, and Junjie Ding, who were investigating the implantation, diffusion, and transport of hydrogen on the Moon.  Lunar Prospector's discovery of increased concentrations of hydrogen and the potential for water ice at the lunar poles prompted the investigations. Profs. Gerald L. Kulcinski and Harrison H. Schmitt advised Mr. Ding, and Dr. John F. Santarius advised Mr. Zalewski and Mr. Malecki.

Mike Zalewski, in his NSS Progress Report, "Dynamics of the Earth-Moon-Sun System and How it Impacts the Solar Wind Implanted Hydrogen Distribution on the Moon", examined the effect of shielding of the Moon from the solar wind for an arbitrary fraction of the lunar orbit by the Earth's magnetosphere. He calculated that shielding for 25% of the lunar day would reduce solar wind deposition by 10's of percent on the lunar near-side, verifying previously published results. He also formulated the equations for including the small tilt of the lunar axis to the ecliptic plane and the non-radial components of the solar wind velocity. The formulation used Euler angles to take into account both the rotation and precession of the Moon. As is generally the case when the ratio of two frequencies is an irrational number, the time intervals between the transitions from light to dark at a point on the lunar surface vary chaotically. This led to difficulties with the numerical integration of the problem, but Mr. Zalewski and Dr. Santarius have continued to attack the problem, and they expect to complete this part of the problem later this year. The formalism, with minor modifications, would apply to the small, non-radial components of the solar wind. Mr. Zalewski said that a valuable addition to the research would be the development of ion velocity distribution functions for the solar wind that are averaged over long times and include the non-ecliptic velocity component.

Junjie Ding's NSS Progress Report, "Relationship of Trapped Solar Wind Hydrogen to Lunar Albedo", correlated Lunar Prospector neutron spectrometer data, which indicates hydrogen content, with Clementine data on the lunar albedo. He used the High-Energy nucleon-meson Transport Code (HETC) from Oak Ridge National Laboratory to calculate the number of neutrons produced per incident galactic cosmic ray proton. He then simulated neutron energy moderation by the surface layers of the regolith using the One-Dimensional Diffusion-Accelerated Neutral-Particle Transport code (ONEDANT). Using these results, Mr. Ding calculated the transport of the neutrons from the lunar surface to the Lunar Prospector, which required including the finite lifetime (900 s) of the neutron and the effects of lunar gravity on it. Mr. Ding's calculations for the hydrogen content of the lunar regolith and the neutron spectrum reaching the spacecraft benchmarked well against previously published results. He compared the calculated lunar hydrogen content with the lunar albedo measurements from the Clementine mission and found an approximately inverse linear relationship between the averaged hydrogen content and the lunar albedo value. Mr. Ding and his advisors interpret this finding to indicate that certain minerals, possibly feldspar, preferentially retain hydrogen. He calculated that the hydrogen in the lunar regolith on the near-Earth side is 22% higher than on the far side. This also indicates preferential hydrogen retention, because shielding of the Moon by the Earth's magnetosphere would favor solar-wind volatile deposition on the lunar far side, as shown by Mr. Zalewski's results.

Matt Malecki's NSS Progress Report, "Investigation of Lunar Pickup-Ion Dynamics", addressed the question of what happens to the hydrogen implanted by the solar wind after it diffuses out of the lunar regolith into the lunar atmosphere. The time for hydrogen release from the regolith is expected to be much less than the lunar lifetime. The atmosphere becomes ionized by photons or solar-wind ions, and the resulting ions are picked up by the solar wind ("pickup ions"). Because the solar wind carries a magnetic field, the pickup ions undergo helical trajectories in the solar wind's frame of reference. Mr. Malecki translated the motion back into the lunar frame of reference, where some of the pickup ions follow trajectories that carry them back to the lunar surface. Depending on the origin point of the pickup ion in the lunar atmosphere, it may impact near the poles. The scale height of hydrogen in the lunar atmosphere, 1022 km, nearly equals the lunar radius, 1738 km, so pickup ion redeposition may significantly increase the hydrogen inventory at the lunar poles. During his NSS internship, Mr. Malecki, solved the equations of motion for pickup ions in a solar wind of arbitrary velocity and with arbitrary magnetic field. He used the solutions to examine sample pickup-ion trajectories. As a follow-up to the internship study, Mr. Malecki and Dr. Santarius plan to implement a Monte Carlo calculation of the pickup-ion redeposition process.

The Center for Lunar Research would not have been possible without the continuing support of some generous members of the Society, a list of whose names can be seen here. More than eight hundred members have contributed to the Center and have enabled students to continue their research thus furthering our understanding of Lunar geology.

If you would like to support the activities of the National Space Society’s Center for Lunar Research, please mail your contribution to the National Space Society at the address below:

Our goals for the Center for Lunar Research are certainly attainable, thanks to our CLR visionary supporters and members like you!

Application for the Center for Lunar Research Summer Scholarship Program

(Click here to download a PDF copy of the application packet.) Not currently available.