This manuscript analyzes lunar lander soil erosion models and trajectory models to calculate how much damage will occur to spacecraft orbiting in the vicinity of the Moon. The soil erosion models have considerable uncertainty due to gaps in our understanding of the basic physics. The results for ∼40 t landers show that the Lunar Orbital Gateway will be impacted by 1000 s to 10,000 s of particles per square meter, but the particle sizes are very small and the impact velocity is low so the damage will be slight. However, a spacecraft in low lunar orbit that happens to pass through the ejecta sheet will sustain extensive damage with hundreds of millions of impacts per square meter: although they are small, they are in the hypervelocity regime, and exposed glass on the spacecraft will sustain spallation over 4% of its surface.
The Damage to Lunar Orbiting Spacecraft Caused by the Ejecta of Lunar Landers
17th Biennial International Conference on Engineering, Science, Construction, and Operations in Challenging Environments ; 2021 ; Virtual Conference
Earth and Space 2021 ; 136-145
2021-04-15
Conference paper
Electronic Resource
English
Decontamination Techniques for Lunar Orbiting Spacecraft
NTIS | 1966
|NTRS | 1991
NTIS | 1991