Speaker
Description
After a hiatus of nearly 50 years, there has been a resurgence of interest in
human exploration of the moon. Over the next few years, NASA and its partners will launch a series of lunar exploration missions with crewed missions beginning in ~2026. These plans for long-term sustained operations at the moon carry an inherently higher risk from space weather than previous endeavors. The intense and highly variable space environment poses a risk to astronaut health as well as to the technology that protects and enables their work.
The goal of our research is to provide effective and actionable information about the lunar space environment that will allow users to anticipate and mitigate impacts to space systems. More specifically we are developing a statistical model of the lunar particle populations responsible for both spacecraft surface and internal charging. The model output will be incorporated into a prototype system that will provide engineers and other stakeholders with situational awareness and information for any post anomaly assessment. Our expectation is that this work will be a pathfinder to identify needs and possible gaps in order to adequately support the expanded presence at the moon in the future. Here we present our efforts to characterization the lunar space environment using Themis/Artemis data and turn that environment into expected charging levels.
