Speaker
Description
Intentionally crashing spacecraft onto the lunar surface poses a potential hazard to human life and infrastructure on the Moon, but also presents an opportunity for scientific discovery. Spacecraft impacts would eject rocks and dust across the Moon at high speed. Without deceleration by an atmosphere, these high speed particles would pose a hazard to habitation and infrastructure. The large speeds of impacting spacecraft mean that this situation is best addressed using computer simulations. While our incomplete knowledge of the target properties creates uncertainty for such models, it also provides an opportunity to learn about the lunar subsurface.
We will describe our state-of-the-art simulation capabilities and how they could be deployed to quantify the pollution caused by such events. This would include predictions of the mass of ejecta, the distribution of ejection speeds and directions, and the extent of the seismic shaking caused by the impact itself.
In 2009, NASA's LCROSS mission ended with a deliberate 2.5km/s impact into the permanently shaded Cabeus crater near to the lunar south pole, as part of the quest for subsurface water ice. We can adapt our numerical models to use targets with different compositions and physical properties. In this way, one may be able to learn about the porosity and thickness of the lunar regolith or even the presence of subsurface volatiles.
