Speaker
Prof.
Esa Kallio
(Finnish Meteorological Institute)
Description
Activity: GSP
Contractor(s): FMI, IRF, UBe, Arquimea
Technical Officer: Fabrice Cipriani
Summary:
Dust above the lunar surface has an importance both for science and for technology. Dust particles are electrically charged due to impact of the solar radiation onto the particles, and therefore, they affect the plasma above the lunar surface. Dust is also a health hazard for crewed missions because micron and submicron sized dust particles can be toxic and cause injuries to the human body. Dust also causes malfunctions in mechanical devices and is therefore a risk for spacecraft and instruments on the lunar surface.
Properties of dust particles above the lunar surface are not fully known, however it can be stated that the high-surface area due to the irregular shape and broken chemical bonds on surface of each dust particle together with the reduced lunar environment cause the dust particles to be very reactive. One critical unknown factor is the electric field and the electric potential near the lunar surface.
In the presentation we introduce a new modelling suite, DPEM (Dusty Plasma Environments: near-surface characterization and Modelling), to study dust environments of the Moon and other airless bodies globally and locally. The DPEM model combines three independent kinetic models: (1) a 3D hybrid model, where ions are modelled as particles, and electrons are modelled as a charge neutralizing fluid, (2) a 2D electrostatic Particle-in-Cell (PIC) model where both ions and electrons are treated as particles, and (3) a 3D Monte Carlo (MC) model where dust particles are modelled as test particles. The models are linked to each other unidirectionally: The hybrid model provides upstream plasma parameters to the PIC model which gives the surface potential to the MC model. We illustrate the prospective of the modelling suite by showing test runs which have been made to derive 3D dust density profiles around the Moon, the Martian moon Phobos and the asteroid RQ36.
