The current high interest in lunar exploration, necessitates the constant updating of our knowledge of lunar environmental conditions. Key lunar environmental conditions include temperature variation, radiation, lack of atmosphere and pressure, meteoroid impact, lunar gravitational field, dust, and moonquakes. These conditions pose various risks to lunar systems and future lunar structures. Understanding lunar environmental conditions is essential for development of requirements for designing and testing lunar systems and structures. Scientific results and data obtained from past, ongoing, and recently launched lunar missions are important to understand the extreme lunar environment. This paper presents some important aspects of scientific results from the following missions: NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), NASA’s Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE), NASA’s Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory (GRAIL), and China’s Lunar Lander and Rover Missions, specifically the Chang’e-4 mission. It also includes comments on the most recent lunar missions [Chinese Chang’e-5, Indian Chandrayaan-3, and the Korea Pathfinder Lunar Orbiter (KPLO)].
Contribution of Recent Lunar Missions to Understanding of Lunar Environment—An Update
19th Biennial International Conference on Engineering, Science, Construction, and Operations in Challenging Environments ; 2024 ; Miami, Florida
Earth and Space 2024 ; 646-662
2024-10-10
Conference paper
Electronic Resource
English
Online Contents | 1996
|British Library Conference Proceedings | 1995
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