Richard W. H. Kozlowski

Caloris Basin: An Enhanced Source for Potassium in Mercury's Atmosphere

Enhanced abundances of neutral potassium (K) in the atmosphere of Mercury have been found above the longitude range containing Caloris Basin. Results of a large data set including six elongations of the planet between June 1986 and January 1988 show typical K column abundances of ∼5.4 x 108 K atoms/cm2. During the observing period in October 1987, when Caloris Basin was in view, the typical K column was ∼2.7 x 109 K atoms/cm2. Another large value (2.1 x 109 K atoms/cm2) was seen over the Caloris antipode in January 1988. This enhancement is consistent with an increased source of K from the well-fractured crust and regolith associated with this large impact basin. The phenomenon is localized because at most solar angles, thermal alkali atoms cannot move more than a few hundred kilometers from their source before being lost to ionization by solar ultraviolet radiation.

Moon based global field airglow: For artemis or any common lunar lander

Abstract An inexpensive, small mass, airglow experiment consisting of a suite of airglow detectors is planned for one or more lunar landers. Solid state detectors measuring light through narrow band filters or concave gratings can integrate emissions from lunar atmospheric constituents and store the information for relay to earth when convenient. The proposed instrument is a simplified version of the Shuttle-borne Arizona Imager-Spectrograph. These zenith and near horizon viewing detectors may allow us to monitor fluctuations in atomic species of oxygen, calcium, sodium, potassium, argon, and neon and OH, if present. This choice of observations would monitor outgassing from the interior (Ar), meteoritic dust flux (Na, K) solar wind sputtering (O, Ca), and outgassing from the surface (implanted Ne, Na, K). A global network could be inexpensively deployed aboard landers carrying a variety of other selenographic instrumentation. Powered by solar cells such a field network will return data applicable to a wide variety of interplanetary medium and solar-lunar interaction problems.