Thermophysical properties of the regolith on the lunar far side revealed by the in situ temperature probing of the Chang'E-4 mission.

ABSTRACT: Temperature probes onboard the Chang'E-4 (CE-4) spacecraft provide the first in situ regolith temperature measurements from the far side of the Moon. We present these temperature measurements with a customized thermal model and reveal the particle size of the lunar regolith at the CE-4 landing site to be ∼15 μm on average over depth, which indicates an immature regolith below the surface. In addition, the conductive component of thermal conductivity is measured as ∼1.53 × 10^-3 W m^-1 K^-1 on the surface and ∼8.48 × 10^-3 W m^-1 K^-1 at a depth of 1 m. The average bulk density is ∼471 kg m^-3 on the surface and ∼824 kg m^-3 in the upper 30 cm of the lunar regolith. These thermophysical properties provide

SUBMITTER: Xiao X 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9646997 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature