Analysis of some lunar soil and rocks samples in terms of photon interaction and photon energy absorption

Understanding the space radiation environment is critical to future manned lunar missions, and this includes photons. In this paper, the attenuation properties of gamma rays in 20 lunar soil and rocks, found at landing site during the Apollo 17, are investigated. Effective atomic numbers Zeff for photon interaction and photon energy absorption for a wide range of photon energies are determined. The results indicate that within the wide compositional range of the Apollo 17 samples, three categories, each one have broadly similar attenuation properties. As well as the results showed that the Zeff has been successfully characterize and correlate the different soil samples with mixing of prevalent local rocks.