Lunar atmospheric H2 detections by the LAMP UV spectrograph on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter |
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| Authors: | S Alan Stern Jason C Cook Jean -Yves Chaufray Paul D Feldman G Randall Gladstone Kurt D Retherford |
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| Institution: | 1. Southwest Research Institute, 1050 Walnut St., Suite 300, Boulder, CO 80302, United States;2. LATMOS/IPSL, Université Versailles Saint Quentin, CNES, CNRS, Guyancourt, France;3. Johns Hopkins University, Department of Physics and Astronomy, Baltimore, MD 21218, United States;4. Southwest Research Institute, 6220 Culebra Road, San Antonio, TX 78238, United States |
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| Abstract: | We report on the detection of H2 as seen in our analysis of twilight observations of the lunar atmosphere observed by the LAMP instrument aboard NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter. Using a large amount of data collected on the lunar atmosphere between September 2009 and March 2013, we have detected and identified, the presence of H2 in the native lunar atmosphere, for the first time. We derive a surface density for H2 of 1.2 ± 0.4 × 103 cm−3 at 120 K. This is about 10 times smaller than originally predicted, and several times smaller than previous upper limits from the Apollo era data. |
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| Keywords: | Atmospheres Composition Abundances Atmospheres Moon Spectroscopy Ultraviolet observations |
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