Lunar Dust Levitation

[MGmirkin]

(Lunar Dust Levitation; Jun 11, 2008)

Static electric charge might help to explain the glowing haze sometimes seen rising 100 kilometers above the Moon’s horizon.

Between May 1966 and January 1968, NASA launched the Surveyor missions to the Moon. Each Surveyor spacecraft weighed approximately 450 kilograms and was designed to soft-land on the lunar surface, riding the tip of a retrorocket descent engine. Surveyor 7 made one of the most intriguing discoveries when its onboard camera detected a faint glow in the lunar night, hovering over the horizon.

In 1998, the Lunar Prospector was launched from Cape Canaveral with gamma-ray spectrometer, alpha particle spectrometer, neutron spectrometer, magnetometer and electron reflectometer instrumentation. During several orbits, the spacecraft detected a surprisingly high voltage change as it passed through the magnetotail extending outward from Earth. The magnetotail is actually a part of the plasma sheath that envelops the Earth. The Moon passes through it once a month at full moon phase and the electric differential was found to occur during that passage.

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[Influx]

Perhaps the seed for a future space mining technology? Maybe even bulk transportation?