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Meteoritic influence on sodium and potassium abundance in the lunar exosphere measured by LADEE

2016; American Geophysical Union; Volume: 43; Issue: 12 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1002/2016gl069541

1944-8007

J. R. Szalay, M. Horányi, A. Colaprete, M. Sarantos,

Isotope Analysis in Ecology

Abstract The Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) orbited the Moon for approximately 6 months, taking data with the Lunar Dust Experiment (LDEX), Ultraviolet‐Visible Spectrometer (UVS), and Neutral Mass Spectrometer (NMS). Here we compare coincident LDEX measurements of meteoritic influx to exospheric column densities of Na and K derived by UVS. We report a strong correlation of exospheric potassium and meteoroid ejecta during the Geminids meteoroid shower, exhibiting a much stronger response than sodium. With the exception of the Geminids, we find a weak correlation between the sporadic meteoroid influx as measured by LDEX and exospheric density as measured by UVS.