Image Analysis Based Estimates of Regolith Ero-sion Due to Plume Impingement Effects

A method to estimate the optical extinction coefficient of dust above the lunar surface during Apollo lunar module (LM) landings is presented. This approach uses image frames acquired from the LM cockpit video camera. Previous methods relied on comparing specific features in clear versus dusty images which severely limited ability to analyze video frames. An improved method is constructed by defining an optical extinction model, using a dust thickness (extent along optical axis) model that is based on the tilt of the camera and height of the dust layer above the surface. The dust thickness model is used to account for the distance light travels through the dust for every image pixel. Dust can be artificially removed or added to images using the extinc-tion model. Then by comparing and matching image luminosity histograms of similar dusty im-ages to similar clear images, and by equating histograms mean and standard deviations, a histo-gram matching method (HMM) is able to estimate the extinction coefficient associated with the dust cloud.