Exploring the effects of the rocket exhaust of the Chang'E-5 lander on the lunar regolith using LROC NAC and landing camera images

Abstract

During the Chang'E-5 (CE-5) lander descent process, the rocket exhaust disturbed the lunar surface of the landing area, which may have affected the properties of the collected samples. Therefore, it is necessary to explore the effects of lander exhaust on the landing area. In this paper, the images obtained by the Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) onboard the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) were used to determine the exhaust-disturbed area. It is found that this area was featured by an increased reflectance of ∼10 ± 1% compared with the background (from I/F = 0.048 to 0.053). According to the magnitude of the change in the reflectance of the landing region, the disturbed area was divided into the focus disturbed zone (FDZ) and the diffuse disturbed zone (DDZ). The DDZ extends from the edge of the FDZ and has a lower reflectance anomaly. The whole exhaust-disturbed area was found to extend mainly via the north-south direction and to have the shape of an irregular ellipse. This spatial extent is highly related to the topographic factors rather than the obstacle avoidance process according to the topography and landing process. The phase function of the lunar surface was used to analyze the photometric performance of the disturbed area. The lower slope of the phase function in FDZ demonstrates less backscattering and a smoothing effect of the disturbed lunar surface. The CE-5 high-resolution LCAM images captured the smoothing and brightening effects of the lunar surface, which confirmed the variation in regolith properties. These effects are consistent with the inference from the NAC observations. The damage to the “fairy-castle” structure of the lunar surface could also contribute to surface smoothing. This study can provide a reference for the subsequent analyses of lunar samples and can help to enhance the understanding of the effect of lander exhaust on the lunar regolith.