Wolves howl at Full Moon: Guess what happens On The Moon?

William Atkins
Thursday, 17 April 2008 21:27

Science - Space

Stubbs cautions, however, that all of this (about Moon static) is mere speculation on the part of scientists because no one has yet researched this supposed phenomenon while it was actually happening.

He states, "Apollo astronauts never landed on a full Moon and they never experienced the magnetotail."

Stubbs states, though, that the NASA Lunar Prospector spacecraft, which orbited the Moon from 1998 to 1999, monitored many magnetotail crossings. During some events, the spacecraft recorded large increases in voltages on the night-side of the Moon. Maybe a good indication of charged particles on the Moon from the Earth's magnetotail?

Jasper Halekas of the University of California at Berkeley, has been studying the relationship of the charged particles on the Moon and the Lunar Prospector spacecraft.

Halekas states, "It is important to note that the plasma sheet (where all the electrons come from) is a very dynamic structure. The plasma sheet is in a constant state of motion, flapping up and down all the time. So as the Moon orbits through the magnetotail, the plasma sheet can sweep across it over and over again. Depending on how dynamic things are, we can encounter the plasma sheet many times during a single pass through the magnetotail with encounters lasting anywhere from minutes to hours or even days."

He adds, "As a result, you can imagine how dynamic the charging environment on the Moon is. The Moon can be just sitting there in a quiet region of the magnetotail and then suddenly all this hot plasma goes sweeping by causing the nightside potential to spike to a kilovolt. Then it drops back again just as quickly….. That [the time of magnetic storms on the Moon] is a very dynamic time for the plasma sheet and we need to study what happens then.”

It is especially important to study this possible phenomenon as NASA plans its future manned missions to the Moon, which are scheduled to begin in the 2020s.

Activities are already begun for unmanned missions to the Moon for further investigations of the lunar landscape and atmosphere.

This article is based on the NASA (Science@NASA) article “The Moon and the Magnetotail.”