Work

The Influence of Space Weathering on the Far‐Ultraviolet Reflectance of Apollo‐Era Soils

Year: 2025

Type: article

Abstract: Building on our previous studies of the far‐ultraviolet (FUV) reflectance of Apollo soil 10084 and lunar soil simulants JSC‐1A and LMS‐1 (Gimar et al., 2022, https://doi.org/10.1029/2022je007508 ; Raut et al., 2018, https://doi.org/10.1029/2018je005567 ), we present new FUV results for Apollo soils 68501 and 71061. Heavily weathered soils (68501, 10084)–enriched in submicroscopic Fe, agglutinates, and sub‐micron scale roughness as revealed by our electron microscopy investigations–are darker in the FUV and predominantly backscatter incident light. In contrast, the relatively less weathered subsurface 71061 soil is approximately twice as bright, exhibits forward scattering, and presents a steeper blue spectral slope between 130 and 160 nm compared to the weathered soils. Differences in either primary composition or mineralogy appear to have little to no effect on the FUV albedo or scattering behavior of these soils since the reflectance of high‐Ti mare 10084 and low‐Ti highland 68501 are nearly indistinguishable within error. Further investigation of additional Apollo‐era soils across various maturity indices is needed to fully characterize the influence of space weathering on lunar soil FUV spectrophotometric response.

Source: Journal of Geophysical Research Planets

DOI: 10.1029/2025je009304