High frequency thermal emission from the lunar surface and near surface temperature of the Moon from Chang’E-2 microwave radiometer

Abstract

Near surface temperature of the Moon and thermal behaviors of the lunar regolith can provide important information for constraining thermal and magmatic evolution models of the Moon and engineering constrains for in situ lunar exploration system. In this study, China’s Chang’E-2 (CE-2) microwave radiometer (MRM) data at high frequency channels are used to investigate near surface temperature of the Moon given the penetration ability of microwave into the desiccated and porous lunar regolith. Factors that affect high frequency brightness temperature (TB), such as surface slope, solar albedo and dielectric constant, are analyzed first using a revised Racca’s temperature model. Radiative transfer theory is then used to model thermal emission from a semi-infinite regolith medium, with considering dielectric constant and temperature profiles within the regolith layer. To decouple the effect of diurnal temperature variation in the uppermost lunar surface, diurnal averaged brightness temperatures at high frequency channels are used to invert mean diurnal surface and subsurface temperatures based on their bilinear profiles within the regolith layer. Our results show that, at the scale of the spatial resolution of CE-2 MRM, surface slope of crater wall varies typically from about 20° to 30°, and this causes a variation in TB about 10–15K. Solar albedo can give rise to a TB difference of about 5–10K between maria and highlands, whereas a ∼2–8K difference can be compensated by the dielectric constant on the other hand. Inversion results indicate that latitude (ϕ) variations of the mean diurnal surface and subsurface temperatures follow simple rules as cos0.30ϕ and cos0.36ϕ, respectively. The inverted mean diurnal temperature profiles at the Apollo 15 and 17 landing sites are also compared with the Apollo heat flow experiment data, showing an inversion uncertainty <4K for surface temperature and <1K for subsurface temperature.