Scattering properties of lunar dust analogs

• Scattering phase functions were measured on a liquid suspension of lunar dust simulants.
• We model the experimental data using Mie theory and measured particle sizes.
• Phase diagram features indicate that dust analogs tend to form agglomerates.
• We conclude that dust characteristics can be obtained from remote sensing data.

The Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) spacecraft is designed to characterize the exospheric dust environment using an on-board suite of specialized sensors. The objective of this paper is to present results from scattering experiments using an aqueous suspension of lunar simulants that contains a population of dust grains ranging in size from ~0.1 μm to 10 μm. The intensity of scattered light is measured with a commercial version of the ultraviolet–visible spectrometer (UVS) used in the LADEE mission. We show that our data is consistent with the fact that micron-sized particles tend to form agglomerates rather than remaining isolated entities and that certain characteristics of the target particles can be predicted from intensity measurements alone. These results can be used directly to assess general features of the lunar exosphere. Further analysis of particle properties from such remote sensing data will require more refined measurements such as polarization features or other components of the Stokes vector.