Lunar Science

The Lunar surface is electrostatically charged by several mechanisms. The dust particles which are resting on the lunar
surface are also charged and levitated. We have taken study model and simulate the model with different Solar Elevation Angles. The Lunar surface charging is depends on the solar elevation angle. When solar elevation angle increases, surface potential also increases with 5.2 V up to the 900, after 900 its start to decreases with -60.31 V up to the 1800. The Electric Field and Electrostatic Force are change with the solar elevation angle, as same as surface potential characteristic. If electric field or potential increases then surface particles are levitated higher. So, applying concept of solar elevation angle on study model we can easily say at which solar elevation angle the surface potential and electric field is Minimum for safe landing at lunar site for future mission.

"Un piccolo passo per un uomo, un passo da gigante per l'umanità" È la frase pronunciata da Neil Armstrong, la notte tra il 20 e il 21 luglio 1969, scendendo la scaletta del LEM (il Lunar Excursion Module), in procinto di poggiare il piede per la prima volta sul suolo lunare: sono passati cinquant'anni da quando il primo essere umano ha messo piede sulla Luna. La grande sfida era iniziata solo sette anni prima, quando il presidente Kennedy pronunciò il celebre discorso in cui promise che gli americani sarebbero arrivati sulla Luna entro la fine del decennio. Fu il coronamento della gara intrapresa coi sovietici per la conquista dello Spazio, uno dei tanti risvolti della guerra fredda. Finita la quale, anche l'interesse per la Luna e per i viaggi spaziali iniziò a scemare, con la sospensione del programma Apollo e la cancellazione degli altri progetti in cantiere. Ma quella sfida astronautica non è stata del tutto inutile e vana, non è stato solo denaro sprecato. Le tecnologie spaziali sviluppate allora hanno avuto tante applicazioni in molti altri campi, nelle comunicazioni, in medicina, nell'informatica, nei trasporti: molti strumenti che utilizziamo oggi quotidianamente, come il telefonino o il computer su cui sto scrivendo, nascono anche da quella sfida spaziale di cinquant'anni fa. Quel "passo da gigante per l'umanità" sembrava davvero il preludio a una marcia inarrestabile verso il futuro, che avrebbe portato l'uomo a vette tecnologiche e scientifiche mai viste. Gli anni '60 e '70 del secolo scorso vissero con grande entusiasmo l'avventura spaziale e tecnologica, persino nella musica popolare fu un turbinìo di "rocket men", "meteormen", "galactica", "space oddity"... Ma era un periodo di speranze, di nuovi orizzonti, di promesse anche in altri campi della società: Woodstock, la rivoluzione hippy, il movimento femminista, come pure Martin Luther King, le contestazioni per il Vietnam, la "primavera di Praga"... In realtà, da allora l'umanità è andata avanti a passi di gambero, un po' avanti un po' indietro. Oggi mi pare che siamo nella fase indietreggiante, in un periodo di crisi e incertezze. Tra antivaccinisti, terrapiattisti, sovranisti, complottisti vari, si respira una profonda crisi di valori, di regresso, di rinuncia a diritti che sembravano ormai acquisiti, di diffidenza nei confronti della scienza e della cultura in generale. Dopo 50 anni si fanno risentire gli scettici, quelli convinti che la conquista della Luna sia stata tutta una messinscena, un colossale complotto che ha coinvolto migliaia di persone in tutto il mondo, per almeno un decennio. Semplicismo e superficialità caratterizzano quest'epoca, traboccante di slogan, tweet e post che creano una loro realtà parallela "à la carte", spingendo il popolo verso una beata ignoranza e dandoci così la sensazione di essere sprofondati in un nuovo Medioevo. La

The team who authored the Time Compression Theory, have now gone on to found TCT Aerospace Ltd. This document is an overview of our 2025 lunar mission call MoonPIE (Moon Probe Initial Explorer). Which will place a time capsule on the moon surface and bring back 1kg of moon rock, with an estimated value of £100m +. The funds from this sale of the moon rock material will be used for our R&D into Quantum Telecommunications.

One of the most important and spectacular events in the history of space exploration was the first Moon Landing of 1969. Safe from the ravages of erosion, agriculture, industry or the expansion of human settlement, the greatest threat to the site of this momentous event - Tranquillity Base - is likely to be from a meteor impact. However, with the advent of space tourism and commercial space travel, the site of humankind's first visit to a celestial body may come under threat of a different kind - that of souvenir hunters and miners. In this paper, the historical background to the Apollo programme is outlined and the sequence of events that made up the Apollo 11 mission, which conducted the first Moon landing, is described before concluding with a consideration of the heritage conservation issues of Tranquillity Base.

Ever since the beginning of the space program, lunar habitation has always been on peoples' minds. Prior researchers have explored habitat building materials– some based on earth-based construction materials, some based on in-situ lunar resources. Geopolymer cement is a cementitious binder made of aluminosilicate materials such as lunar regolith. A cementitious binder made of lunar regolith as the main geopolymer precursor, instead of as an added aggregate, is a solution that has not been deeply explored in prior works. This research explores the curing process of lunar regolith based geopolymer cement in an environment that loosely approximates the lunar environment, using the lunar average daytime temperature and a vacuum. The results did not show much promise for the samples cured under both heat and vacuum as the longest-cured data point did not meet compressive strength standards, but another pathway to lunar habitation may be found in a separate set of samples that cured under heat and ambient atmospheric pressure.

The main processes under study for producing oxygen from lunar regolith are:
    a) reduction by hydrogen
    b) electrolysis of molten regolith
    c) carbothermal reduction
    d) the FFC-Cambridge process

I looked more specifically at the use of the Fresnel lens in the first two processes. Although I think the Fresnel lens could also be used in the other two processes. For the carbothermal reduction, the lens could heat the injected methane to + 1000 ° C. The same principle can be applied to heat CaCl2 salt to 950 ° C.

We explore about fifty Australian Aboriginal accounts of lunar and solar eclipses to determine how Aboriginal groups understood this phenomenon. We summarise the literature on Aboriginal references to eclipses, showing that many Aboriginal groups viewed eclipses negatively, frequently associating them with bad omens, evil magic, disease, blood and death. In many communities, Elders or medicine men were believed to have the ability to control or avert eclipses by magical means, solidifying their role as provider and protector within the community. We also show that many Aboriginal groups understood the motions of the sun-earth-moon system, the connection between the lunar phases and tides, and acknowledged that solar eclipses were caused by the moon blocking the sun.

The internal roadmap for deep space exploration proposed by the International Space Exploration Coordination Group (ISECG) clearly identifies the Moon as the first step towards a larger solar system exploration. In this context, the use of Earth Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) signals at Moon altitude has been extensively studied in the past, within and outside the European Space Agency (ESA). This interest has been reflected in "The Interoperable Global Navigation Satellite Systems Space Service Volume" booklet issued by the International Committee on GNSS (ICG). NASA, with their Magnetospheric Multiscale Mission (MMS) mission, has recently demonstrated the reception of GPS signals at a distance which is about halfway between Earth and Moon, marking an important step towards the use of this technology in future lunar operational missions. The very weak signals received in cislunar space and the particular unfavourable geometry with all the signal coming from a similar region of the sky (i.e. high Dilution Of Precision, DOP, values), requires the development of advanced techniques as part of the spaceborne GNSS receiver, both at signal processing level (higher sensitivity) and at navigation filter level. The current approach for deep space Orbit Determination and Time Synchronization (ODTS) relies on-ground-based solutions such as radiometric measurements via Telemetry, Tracking and Command (TTC) link or advanced solutions such as optical links (e.g. laser ranging and optical time transfer) or Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) techniques. The ground-based approaches suffer from relatively high cost, complexity in the sharing of spare ground resources (e.g. access to deep space network, DSN) and poor performances for real-time on-board ODTS (often in orders of kilometres or tens of kilometres). Based on ESA and NASA analysis presented in several publications, a lunar mission using a spaceborne GNSS receiver could achieve performances around 50-100 m 3D RMS orbit determination and microsecond level time synchronization accuracy with high availability in real time on-board, without the need of frequency ground contact. In this context, ESA is developing a spaceborne receiver that is expected to provide outstanding performances in cislunar space missions and plans to demonstrate this technology as part of the Lunar 1 Paper ID: 64095 oral Pathfinder mission planned to be launched in 2024. To the ESA knowledge, this could become the first ever demonstration of GNSS reception by a satellite in lunar orbit. The present contribution provides details of the experiment (including concept of operations, duration, etc.), the GNSS antenna and GNSS receiver and expected performances, potentially including real hardware in the loop tests with radio frequency constellation simulators and the engineering model of the GNSS receiver.

The concept of a space elevator dates back to Tsilokovsky, but they are not commonly considered in near-term plans for space exploration, perhaps because a terrestrial elevator would not be possible without considerable improvements in tether material. A Lunar Space Elevator (LSE), however, can be built with current technology using commercially available tether polymers. This paper considers missions leading to infrastructure capable of shortening the time, lowering the cost and enhancing the capabilities of robotic and human explorers. These missions use planetary scale tethers, strings many thousands of kilometers long stabilized either by rotation or by gravitational gradients. These systems promise major reduction in transport costs versus chemical rockets, in a rapid timeframe, for a modest investment. Science will thus benefit as well as commercial activities.

The concept of a space elevator dates back to Tsilokovsky, but they are not commonly considered in near-term plans for space exploration, perhaps because a terrestrial elevator would not be possible without considerable improvements in tether material. A Lunar Space Elevator (LSE), however, can be built with current technology using commercially available tether polymers. This paper considers missions leading to infrastructure capable of shortening the time, lowering the cost and enhancing the capabilities of robotic and human explorers. These missions use planetary scale tethers, strings many thousands of kilometers long stabilized either by rotation or by gravitational gradients. These systems promise major reduction in transport costs versus chemical rockets, in a rapid timeframe, for a modest investment. Science will thus benefit as well as commercial activities.

The interest in Moon exploration has substantially grown in the latest years, positioning the Moon as an attractive testbed to develop the required technologies and capabilities for human Deep Space exploration. In past decades, lunar missions have almost entirely relied on Direct-to-Earth (DTE) communications, whilst using ranging radiometric measurements from Earth for navigation. The growing trend in the number of missions to the Moon is creating demand for the deployment of a lunar communications and navigations infrastructure to support the international community. This in turn can act as a catalyst for additional public and private worldwide cis-lunar initiatives. The European Space Agency's vision represented in the Moonlight initiative, is to stimulate the creation and development of lunar communications and navigation services, to be delivered by private partner, that will support the next generation of institutional and private Lunar Exploration Missions, including enhancing the performance of those missions currently under definition. Landing on the Moon has been successfully performed since the initial phase of the lunar exploration, both with human and robotic missions. However, recent failures have shown that landing on the Earth natural satellite is no easy task and that accurate landing within 50 metres or even 10 metres from the target location is today considered almost impossible. The limitation of the current technology does not allow to explore directly specific areas of interest. For example landing close to a permanently shadowed areas, without risk of landing in the shadow and thus losing the mission or landing on peaks of eternal light. Finally, landing on the far side is currently very risky and difficult, requiring dedicated lunar infrastructure for each mission (e.g. Chang'e 4 mission), thus potentially precluding the access to the lunar far side for future missions. The Moonlight navigation service aims to improve significantly the landing accuracy, potentially enabling landing on peaks of eternal light or landing in very specific locations while at the same time saving propellant mass and shortening the duration from launch to landing. The paper will describe the potential concept of operations for the navigation service and how future missions could take benefits of Moonlight navigation service, assess the performances achievable on a specific mission profile representative of a lunar lander mission and describe the high-level user terminal, including its preliminary size, mass and power profile.

Space-based solar power has conventionally used solar panel arrays on satellites to harness light energy from the Sun, the authors of this communication suggest the innovative utilization of mirrors to support solar power generation for lunar missions. The existence of peaks of eternal light (PELs) on the lunar surface can be used to our advantage in a novel design allowing for continuous, unlimited access to a light source. However, this has yet to be tested and this may prove to have further limitations in practice. (

The emergence of intelligence is likely a relatively recent phenomena throughout the cosmos. The total number of habitable extraterrestrial planets within the Milky Way capable of supporting advanced, intelligent life within the next 500 Myr is <5,162. Almost all of which are earth-like orbiting around a single star with mass ranges from 0.628 to 1 solar mass. No exomoons are capable of supporting advanced life, and a negligible number of low mass binary systems (<0.628 solar mass) are habitable. The nearest extraterrestrial industrial civilization lies at least 88.7 million light years away, and possibly 111 million light years beyond. No extraterrestrial civilization arises before 232.74 Mya within the observable universe, and no extraterrestrial civilization arises before 270.95 Mya within the universe by co-moving distance. Despite great distances between the nearest civilizations and the low probability of emergence within our vicinity, given the sheer size of the univers...

Civil Engineering is getting prepared for operations in space. The Moon will presumably be the focal point in this new era. Civil Engineering professionals, in close cooperation with other scientists and engineers are in the phase of planning operations on the Moon. The experience gained on the Earth through four millenniums is now on the eve of being applied in a new environment. In this paper, an assessment is aimed to show the new challenges of Civil Engineering in front of this new Nature, and the necessary considerations for surpassing the difficulties. Different aspects of the problem, with similarities and differences as compared to applications on the Earth, like choice and design of the structures, methods of construction, project management and cost engineering, use of imported and local materials, mounting and fabrication on the Moon are discussed.

Το κείμενο αυτό προήλθε από παραγγελία για τον κατάλογο της εικαστικής έκθεσης Ammophila Vol.I: Birth, που διοργανώθηκε στην Ελαφόνησο μεταξύ 22-25 Αυγούστου 2020, με επιμελήτρια την καλλιτέχνιδα Εύη Ρουμάνη. Πρόκειται για μια απόπειρα σύνοψης της εννοιολογικής θεώρησης του σεληνιακού προτύπου (δηλ. των σεληνιακών φάσεων) την οποία ο Γιάννης Χρήστου θεμελίωσε και εφήρμοσε στη δημιουργία του, κυρίως στην ύστερη φάση της. Με αναγωγές σε θεωρίες και δεδομένα της Ανθρωπολογίας και της Ιστορίας, ο συνθέτης συγκροτεί ένα πρότυπο δημιουργικής αρχής, αντικαθιστώντας το αψιδωτό διάγραμμα της Αρχής του Φοίνικα (Phoenix Prinicple) που είχε υιοθετήσει για τις πρώτες δημιουργίες του.

The running of the Babylonian lunar calendar is simple, every 1st day of the month coincided with the observation of the new crescent. The running of the Egyptian lunar calendar is confusing because, according to Parker, every 1st day of the month coincided with the observation of the 1st invisibility (day after the new moon and before the new crescent)! Despite this absurdity, to begin the month by an observation which is in fact a non-observation, his work is always considered as authoritative.

Se puede entender que este es un libro de astronomía general pero  centrado exclusivamente en los movimientos aparentes del Sol y de la Luna.

Prácticamente todos los tópicos básicos de astronomía son tratados: determinación de las coordenadas celestes de la Luna y el Sol; transformación de coordenadas; ortos y ocasos; tránsito por el horizonte; cálculo de las fechas de la estaciones; fases lunares; etc.

The 1st book of Ra-Ah-Si-Rus, This was originally published as a draft copy in 2015 ( * total solar eclipse at the Spring equinox ) ... and then as its 1st photographic edition in 2016. Since then, 60+ signed copies have been printed and posted around the world. The most up to date version can be downloaded @ www.Infinity-codes.net. All work is done by donation, as I have explained in the book, the world Maths situation, shows that we can't seem to Add up very well as a species, Peace

El objetivo de este trabajo es presentar evidencia etnohistórica y arqueoastronómica de la observación de la Luna en contextos incas del Collasuyu. Como hipótesis se asume la importancia de la latitud geográfica - en términos andinos - en la ubicación de ushnus al sur del trópico de Capricornio, en relación al fenómeno de paradas mayores. Los resultados indican la posibilidad de que los incas manejaran un sistema de meses lunares intercalares gracias al fenómeno del crossover, además del ciclo Metónico, como mecanismo de seguimiento y predicción de eclipses con fechas cercanas al 1470
d.C.

A Lunar Space Elevator [LSE] can be built today from existing commercial polymers; manufactured, launched and deployed for less than $2B. A prototype weighing 48 tons with 100 kg payload can be launched by 3 Falcon-Heavy's, and will pay for itself in 53 sample return cycles within one month. It reduces the cost of soft landing on the Moon at least threefold, and sample return cost at least ninefold. Many benefits would arise. A near side LSE can enable valuable science mission, as well as mine valuable resources and ship to market in cislunar space, LEO and Earth's surface. A far-side LSE can facilitate construction and operation of a super sensitive radio astronomy facility shielded from terrestrial interference by the Moon. The LSE would facilitate substantial acceleration of human expansion beyond LEO.

Spirit, Power and Axis of everything, in our mortal eyes there is Emptiness: for the truly complete in these empty ones is empty. The Moon, the Axis of everything in our world, is therefore empty for them, and SHOULD BE empty. // Дух, Сила и Ось всего, в смертных очах — Пустота: ибо истинно полное в них, пустых, пусто. Луна, Ось всего в нашем мире, для них посему и пуста, и ДОЛЖНА БЫТЬ пустой.

As a fundamentally interdisciplinary sector of study, oceanography spans not only the physical and chemical attributes of large saline aquatic environments, but also overlaps with biological considerations of oceanic flora and fauna, and incorporates a wide variety of sub-topics, from orbital wave dynamics, to plate tectonics, to acoustic oceanography. As a major component of the planetary surface, oceans therefore additionally form a significant component of Earth Science study, particularly in an era of ongoing and accelerating climate change.
However, one interdisciplinary intersection which has largely been hitherto underexplored is that of oceanography’s overlap with the speculative arts, a subset which might be termed speculative oceanography. This paper intends to address this gap in research by collating and reprising existing speculative oceanography, in order to identify and codify the broad areas of interest and future study which arise therefrom. One such area identified, which explores the oceanographic properties of non-terrestrial large aquatic bodies, is herein termed exo-oceanography, for example. The paper concludes with a call for greater interdisciplinary co-operation between oceanographic researchers and speculation methodologies.

Technical report and algorithms for the Lunar Visibility Calculator, a tool that determines visibility, lighting conditions for lunar topography, intended for study of the Peaks of Eternal Light near the Lunar South Pole, with a test area derived using Clementine data.

The objective of this experiment was to know if it was possible to obtain clear glass from lunar regolith simulant with as a means of melting, only, with a Fresnel lens of 31x31 cm and at a latitude of 50° and this between the months of December 2021 and January 2021. The answer is yes!!!

The comparison of the 28 lunar mansions of Daba and Dongba scripts revealed that Daba glyphs are single graphemes that are generally pictograms depicting the star atlases or related to the syllables of the stars names. Their counterparts in Dongba writing, conversely, are mostly ligatures consisting of several graphemes. They could be pictograms depicting the star atlases or the syllabic representations of the lunar mansions designations, or the combinations of both. Basing the analysis on the functions of the glyphs in writing down languages, the plausible path of development that can be highlighted from these two scripts have been reconstructed. Further on, the hypothesis is proposed according to which Daba script could be the initial stage of the Dongba writing system.

We appreciate the services provided by proofreaders and format checkers to assure uniformly high quality of documents produced at Louisiana Tech University. Because of the differences between mathematical documents and other documents, we request that the following be kept in mind.

The emergence of intelligence is a relatively recent phenomena throughout the cosmos. The total number of habitable extraterrestrial planets within the Milky Way capable of supporting advanced, intelligent life within the next 500 Myr is <969. Most of which are earth-like orbiting around a single star with mass ranges from 0.712 to 1 solar mass. No exomoons are capable of supporting advanced life, and a negligible number of low mass binary systems (<0.712 solar mass) are habitable. The nearest extraterrestrial industrial civilization lies at least 51.85 million light years away, and possibly at least 100 million light years or beyond. No extraterrestrial civilization arises before 119 Mya within the observable universe, and no extraterrestrial civilization arises before 138 Mya within the universe by co-moving distance. Despite great distances between the nearest civilizations and the low probability of emergence within our vicinity, given the sheer size of the universe, the total number of intelligent extraterrestrial civilizations likely approaches infinity or \left(\frac{1}{4.4\cdot10^{7}}\right)^{3}\cdot3.621\cdot10^{6}\cdot10^{10^{10^{122}}} if the universe is finitely bounded. Based on incentives for economic growth, all civilizations tend to expands near the speed of light and will eventually universally connect with each other via wormhole networks. Within such a network, the farthermost distances traversable from earth can be either infinite or 3.621\cdot10^{6}\cdot10^{10^{10^{122}}}light years in radius if the universe is finitely bounded...

Emplacement of four or more kinetic penetrators geographically distributed over the lunar surface can enable a broad range of scientific exploration objectives of high priority and provide significant synergy with planned orbital missions. Whilst past landed missions achieved a great deal, they have not included a far-side lander, or investigation of the lunar interior apart from a very small area on the near side. Though the LCROSS mission detected water from a permanently shadowed polar crater, there remains in-situ confirmation, knowledge of concentration levels, and detailed identification of potential organic chemistry of astrobiology interest. The planned investigations will also address issues relating to the origin and evolution of the Earth-Moon system and other Solar System planetary bodies. Manned missions would be enhanced with use of water as a potential in-situ resource; knowledge of potential risks from damaging surface Moonquakes, and exploitation of lunar regolith for radiation shielding. LunarNet is an evolution of the 2007 LunarEX proposal to ESA (European Space Agency) which draws on recent significant advances in mission definition and feasibility. In particular, the successful Pendine full-scale impact trials have proved impact survivability for many of the key technology items, and a penetrator system study has greatly improved the definition of descent systems, detailed penetrator designs, and required resources. LunarNet is hereby proposed as an exciting stand-alone mission, though is also well suited in whole or in-part to contribute to the jigsaw of upcoming lunar missions, including that of a significant element to the ILN (International Lunar Network).

After half a century hiatus the moon flights are progressing to resume in 2023 with moon landings now scheduled to take place in December 2023. Here is my flight crew interview where I outline my reasons for applying for the historic moon flight which Yusaku Maezawa 前澤友作 of Japan has funded and which Elon Musk's SpaceX corporation of the United States is the flight organiser. My aim to enrol for a moon flight (until September 2022) has been to draw attention to our very rapidly deteriorating environment and the fact that there appears to be a systematic bias in the West to underestimate the speed of climate change in the forecasts. (This bias to much later dates stands in stark contrast to the First Nations of Americas United Nations General Assembly Ethnoclimatology Motion 101292 which stipulated a much faster progression on climate change than the Western academia has been generally forecasting or even admitting - based on indigenous people's ancient ethnohistories how the last Ice Age was ended by then global warming with ice sheets destabilised rapidly. As a result, it is likely, if not almost certain that much faster changes in our climate will occur than those stipulated in the official documents released by UNFCCC, IPCC, WMO, UNEP, IEA, and WTO. Despite my setback in September 2022 regarding my plans to shout about climate change from the moon to get more attention to this important matter, I continue my efforts from this platform to continually remind world's nations that there are "red lines" laid down by others on climate inaction: what they will tolerate and what they will not. We need to avoid a crisis over our sharing of the atmospheric resource of our planet that needs protected against greedy users. This is important as in the past when men were fighting over access to the water holes and clubbing themselves to the death, today such fighting over global warming, climate change, Asia's monsoon rains, and sea level rise would automatically occur in industrial scale with deployment of nuclear weapons (Asia's monsoon can be re-instated by 260 nuclear explosions after the Arctic Ocean sea ice cover melts away by so-called "nuclear winter" effect - but this would involve unacceptable death tolls in the North.)

The paper begins by the sentences where Caesar estates that the druids counted the days at the beginning of night (B.G., VI, 18, 2) and that some of these druids followed a formation during twenty years (B.G., VI, 14, 3-6). Then the paper explores the knowledge that the druids could have about the moon and its motions. The paper discuses the notions of “lunistice” or “moon stand stills” and Metonic cycle and their possible use in Celtic religious traditions. There are treated news by Strabo and Diodorus on possible lunar feasts and the alignments of some monuments in Celtic sites towards the “lunistices”.

The emergence of intelligence is a relatively recent phenomena throughout the cosmos. The total number of habitable extraterrestrial planets within the Milky Way capable of supporting advanced, intelligent life within the next 500 Myr is &lt;10,799. Almost all of which are earth-like orbiting around a single star with mass ranges from 0.628 to 1 solar mass. No exomoons are capable of supporting advanced life, and a negligible number of low mass binary systems (&lt;0.628 solar mass) are habitable. The nearest extraterrestrial industrial civilization lies at least 88.7 million light years away, and possibly 111 million light years beyond. No extraterrestrial civilization arises before 232.74 Mya within the observable universe, and no extraterrestrial civilization arises before 270.95 Mya within the universe by co-moving distance. Despite great distances between the nearest civilizations and the low probability of emergence within our vicinity, given the sheer size of the universe, the...

This paper presents the results obtained during an experiment to melt the LCATS-1 lunar regolith simulant with a Fresnel lens with a view to possible use on the Moon. Fresnel lens has many advantages over mirror, for example its weight, ease of use, low cost, etc.

Characterised by a surface bound exosphere and localised crustal magnetic fields, the Moon was considered as a passive object when solar wind interacts with it. However, the neutral particle and plasma measurements around the Moon by recent dedicated lunar missions, such as Chandrayaan-1, Kaguya, Chang'E-1, LRO, and ARTEMIS, as well as IBEX have revealed a variety of phenomena around the Moon which results from the interaction with solar wind, such as backscattering of solar wind  protons as energetic neutral atoms (ENA) from lunar surface, sputtering of atoms from the lunar surface, formation of a “mini-magnetosphere” around lunar magnetic anomaly regions, as well as several plasma populations around the Moon, including solar wind protons scattered from the lunar surface, from the magnetic anomalies, pick-up ions, protons in lunar wake and more. This paper provides a review of these recent findings and presents the interaction of solar wind with the Moon in a new perspective.

This paper summarizes the search for the Peaks of Eternal Light (PELs) on the lunar South Pole. Already predicted in the 19th century, the question of existence of such peaks has revived after the Clementine and Lunar Prospector missions and detailed ground based radar imagery. These peaks can be considered primary targets for future robotic or manned missions. For the first time now, a detailed analysis has been made of the existence, whereabouts and characteristics of these peaks. Also
tools have been developed to analyse the surface and slopes of the polar areas at pixel-level based on orbital imagery. Mission planners of the arising multitude of (commercial) lunar or Mercury missions can use this information and these tools to derive engineering implications.

Lunar surface is electrostatically charged by space plasma currents and ultraviolet portion of sunlight to certain potential. Due to the surface charging phenomena, the dust particles resting on the surface get charged and levitated in the lunar environment. The levitation of dust particle involves consideration of some parameters like density, charge, potential and electric field. The dust levitation in the lunar environment may be studied using particle-in-cell method. We have explored the particle-in-cell code in MATLAB to study the scenario by taking various models. We have considered various horizontal cases for lunar surface during the research work which may be helpful to the mission planner.

Sample return missions are always compromise between sample acquisition devices, return propulsion systems, and available payload mass. Sample acquisition systems must be smaller and simpler as sample return mission go further into our Solar System. That’s why it is important to develop lightweight and simple but efficient sample acquisition systems to meet the scientific objectives. Harpoon-based sample return systems have been proposed for missions to comets, asteroids, and other NEO targets. Here I propose simple harpoon-based sample system also for lunar sample return mission. Hollow harpoon can be launched with e.g. pressurized gas to different surfaces and to different distances, and then rewind it back with lightweight winch. Questions about possible penetration depths, harpoon release mechanisms, and how to acquire multiple samples are reviewed.