Impacts of the Space Environment on Lunar Exploration

(Draft) The Moon is once again a strong focus as a destination for both robotic and human space exploration. Multiple nations have deployed spacecraft in lunar orbit in recent years with instrumentation for in-situ measurements of lunar orbital environments and remote sensing of the lunar surface. The Chinese Chang’e missions have deployed two rovers on the lunar surface and multiple lunar landers and rovers are planned by NASA and other national space programs for lunar surface operations in the coming years. In addition to these purely robotic exploration programs, NASA has started construction of the Gateway space station for crewed operations in lunar orbit and development work has begun on the Human Landing System infrastructure which promises to return humans to the lunar surface for the first time since the last Apollo missions in the 1970’s. Because the Moon has very little atmosphere and no strong intrinsic magnetic field to protect the surface from meteoroid impacts and charge particles, respectively, the space environments that need to be considered when designing and operating lunar exploration missions are essentially the free-field environments used in design of interplanetary missions. This presentation discusses the lunar ionizing radiation and plasma, solar UV/EUV, thermal, and meteoroid environments of importance to space mission design including aspects of lunar environments and their impacts on lunar exploration that have already been encountered in exploration of interplanetary space as well as a number of unique aspects of the lunar environment that will represent new challenges to exploration operations on the lunar surface.