Lunar Boomerang: Computer modeling of an innovative technique to study electromagnetic fields at the Lunar surface

As the Moon lacks a collisional atmosphere, the space plasmas and the solar radiation can directly interact with its rocky surface, causing significant surface charging. Lunar surface charging and its resultant surface dust environment impact the safety and functionality of human and technology systems on the lunar surface. Therefore, to characterize the surface electric field configuration is important for the lunar exploration activities. The electromagnetic field configuration on the lunar surface is rather poorly known and will be studied on this project through computational modeling using Simion.

The Lunar Boomerang project aims to launch charged particles from the lunar surface and probe the electromagnetic field configurations using the properties of returning particles. In addition to the electric force, charged particles affected by the magnetic force are prone to gyrate with gyro-radii reaching up to several km. Depending on the particle energy, emission direction, and distribution of the field, a fraction of particles will return. A particle detector on the same instrument will detect these returning particles. From these, an electromagnetic field configuration can be determined.

This is an innovative technique where IRF, the Swedish Institute for Space Physics will conduct proof-of-concept studies.

 We carry out numerical simulations using the particle tracing software, SIMION, to trace charged particle motion in a predefined electromagnetic field, and records all the information of the particles hitting a surface. By varying electromagnetic fields and initial particle energies and direction to predict the characteristics of these returning particles. The results of simulations with different electromagnetic field configurations will be presented and discussed.