THE CHANDRAYAAN-2 SPECTROMETER MAKES THE FIRST OBSERVATIONS OF ARGON-40 GLOBAL DISTRIBUTION IN THE MOON'S EXOSPHERE

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Bengaluru :According to the Indian Space Research Organisation, the Chandra's Atmospheric Composition Explorer-2 (CHACE-2) quadrupole mass spectrometer onboard the Chandrayaan-2 mission has made the first-of-its-kind observations of the global distribution of Argon-40 in the tenuous lunar exosphere. The Bengaluru-based space agency said in a statement on Tuesday that these findings provide insight into the dynamics of lunar exospheric species as well as radiogenic activity in the first few tens of metres below the lunar surface.

The 'exosphere' is the outermost area of a celestial body's upper atmosphere, where constituent atoms and molecules seldom meet and can escape into space. A surface-boundary-exosphere exists on Earth's Moon. Various mechanisms, including as thermal desorption, solar wind sputtering, photo-stimulated desorption, and micrometeorite impact vaporisation, feed distinct constituents in the exosphere from the surface for the Moon. Thermal escape (also known as the Jean's escape) may cause exospheric atoms to escape into space. Photo-ionisation and charge exchange with solar wind ions also ionise the atoms.

They can then be carried away by the solar wind's convective electric field. Some of these atoms/ions may be deposited on the lunar surface as well. As a result of a dynamic equilibrium between multiple source and sink processes, the lunar exosphere occurs. Noble gases are useful tracers for studying the processes of surface-exosphere interaction, and Argon-40 (Ar-40) is a particularly useful tracer atom for studying the dynamics of lunar exospheric species, according to the statement. The radioactive breakdown of Potassium-40 (K-40) beneath the lunar surface produces Ar-40. It diffuses across inter-granular space and makes its way up to the lunar exosphere via seepages and faults once generated.

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