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      Sputter Yields of the Lunar Surface: Experimental Validation and Numerical Modelling of Solar Wind Sputtering of Apollo 16 Soils

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          Abstract

          Sputtering by solar wind ions is a key process driving the ejection of high-energy particles into the exospheres of airless bodies like asteroids, Mercury and the Moon. In view of upcoming missions which will deliver new in-situ data on these exospheres like the Artemis program at the Moon and BepiColombo at Mercury, a deeper understanding of sputtering effects is crucial. In this work, we combine sensitive quartz crystal microbalance measurements and numerical simulations to quantify sputter yields of Apollo soil 68501 under solar wind relevant conditions. We find that none of the commonly used simulation codes can reliably predict laboratory sputter yields without experimental benchmarks. All of the employed packages significantly overestimate the sputter yields of flat samples by at least a factor of 2 for the case of hydrogen. When accounting for surface roughness and regolith-like porosity, sputter yields are decreased even further to 7.3E-3 atoms\ion and 7.6E-2 atoms\ion for H and He at solar wind energies of 1 keV\amu, respectively. The reduced yields of porous regolith structures are largely independent of the ion incidence angle, making them applicable across a wide range of lunar latitudes. This study highlights the need for experimental validation of sputtering models to ensure accurate predictions for space weathering and lunar exosphere composition.

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          Author and article information

          Journal
          18 October 2024
          Article
          2410.14450
          109c25f9-1b4f-4cf1-b8a7-d2d2fedb6525

          http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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          Custom metadata
          astro-ph.EP astro-ph.IM astro-ph.SR physics.space-ph

          Planetary astrophysics,Instrumentation & Methods for astrophysics,Space Physics,Solar & Stellar astrophysics

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