2009/09/21 by Martin Wieser, Stas Barabash, S. Barabash +11 · 159 citations
Physics and Astronomy · #Asteroid #Astro and Planetary Science #Astrobiology #Astronomy #Atomic physics #Computational physics #Energetic neutral atom #Hydrogen #Magnetopause #Physics #Planetary Science and Exploration #Plasma #Polar wind #Reflection (computer programming) #Regolith #Solar System #Solar wind #Space Science and Extraterrestrial Life #Space weathering #Spacecraft #astro-ph.EP #physics.plasm-ph #physics.space-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1016/j.pss.2009.09.012
published in Planetary and Space Science 57(14-15), 2132-2134 (Elsevier BV) · 2 figures
openalex publication_date 2009/09/21 · arxiv created 2010/12/14 · arxiv updated 2010/12/15 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
We report on measurements of extremely high reflection rates of solar wind particles from regolith-covered lunar surfaces. Measurements by the Sub-keV Atom Reflecting Analyzer (SARA) instrument on the Indian Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft in orbit around the Moon show that up to 20% of the impinging solar wind protons are reflected from the lunar surface back to space as neutral hydrogen atoms. This finding, generally applicable to regolith-covered atmosphereless bodies, invalidates the widely accepted assumption that regolith almost completely absorbs the impinging solar wind.