Analysis of Regolith Simulant Ejecta Distributions from Normal Incident Hypervelocity Impact

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has established the Constellation Program. The Constellation Program has defined one of its many goals as long‐term lunar habitation. Critical to the design of a lunar habitat is an understanding of the lunar surface environment; of specific importance is the primary meteoroid and subsequent ejecta environment. The document, NASA SP‐8013 “Meteoroid Environment Model Near Earth to Lunar Surface,” was developed for the Apollo program in 1969 and contains the latest definition of the lunar ejecta environment. There is concern that NASA SP‐8013 may overestimate the lunar ejecta environment. NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office (MEO) has initiated several tasks to improve the accuracy of our understanding of the lunar surface ejecta environment. This paper reports the results of experiments on projectile impact into powdered pumice and unconsolidated JSC‐1A Lunar Mare Regolith simulant targets. Projectiles were accelerated to velocities between 2.45 and 5...