Abstract
The “Moon Mapping” project is a collaboration between the Italian and Chinese Governments allowing cooperation and exchange between students from both countries. The main aim of the project is to analyze remotely-sensed data collected by the Chinese space missions Chang’E-1/2 over the Moon surface. The Italian Space Agency is responsible for the Italian side and the Center of Space Exploration, while the China Ministry of Education is responsible for the Chinese side. In this article, we summarize the results of the “Moon Mappining” project topic #1: “map of the solar wind ion” using the data collected by Chang’E-1 satellite. Chang’E-1 is a lunar orbiter, its revolution period lasts 2 h, and its orbit is polar. The satellite is equipped with two Solar Wind Ion Detectors (SWIDs) that are two perpendicular electrostatic spectrometers mapping the sky with a field of view of 15° × 6.7° × 24 ch. The spectrometers can measure solar wind flux in the range 40 eV/q–17 keV/q with an energy resolution of 8% and time resolution of ∼3 s. The data collected by the two Solar Wind Ion Detectors are analyzed to characterize the solar wind flux and composition on the Moon surface and to study the time variations due to the solar activity. The data measured by Chang’E-1 compared with the one measured in the same period by the electrostatic spectrometers onboard the ACE satellite, or with another solar activity indicator as the sunspot number, enrich the multi-messenger/multi-particle view of the Sun, gathering valuable information about the space weather outside the Earth magnetosphere.
Highlights
The “Moon Mapping” project is a collaboration between the Italian and ChineseGovernments allowing cooperation and exchange between students from both countries
The Solar Wind Ion Detectors (SWIDs) measures ion differential flux arriving from half (180◦) of that plane, and ions are collected by a Micro Channel Plate (MCP) detector whose anode is divided into 12 equal readouts; each SWID channel has an angular view of 15◦
Two background sources are expected in the measurement of the ion differential flux of the SWID spectrometers: the intrinsic noise rate of MCP detector and the background detected when the Sun is in the field of view of SWID channels
Summary
The main aim of the project is to analyze remotely-sensed data collected by the Chinese space missions Chang’E-1/2 over the Moon surface. The project has six research topics: (1) map of the solar wind ion; (2) geo-morphological map of the Moon; (3) data pre-processing of Chang’E-1 mission; (4) map of element distribution; (5) establishment of 3D digital visualization system; and (6) compilation and publication of a tutorial on joint lunar mapping. NASA launched five THEMIS satellites in 2007, and two of them were moved into lunar orbit in 2010 to study solar wind interactions with the Moon; the mission was renamed ARTEMIS [15]. The interaction of the Earth’s magnetosphere with the solar wind, is a key factor of the Space Weather studies providing a sizable impact on space technology
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