Future exploration efforts of the Moon, Mars and other bodies are poised to focus heavily on persistent and sustainable survey and research efforts. This is especially true for the Moon, as additional orbital and surface efforts have been made by a number of countries for the first time and given the recent interest in a long-term sustainable human presence at the Moon. Key to these efforts is understanding a number of important processes on the lunar surface for both scientific and operational purposes. We discuss the potential value of a powerful tool complementary to currently used reconnaissance techniques: in-situ artificial substrate witness plates. These tools can supplement familiar remote sensing and sample acquisition techniques and provide a sustainable way of monitoring processes in key locations on planetary surfaces while also maintaining a low environmental footprint. We examine and discuss unique case studies to show how key processes such as water transport/hydration, presence and contamination of biologically relevant molecules, solar activity related effects, and other processes can be measured using small artificial substrate witness plates we call ‘biscuits’. These biscuits can yield key location sensitive, time integrated measurements on these processes that can inform scientific understanding of the Moon as well as enable operational goals in lunar exploration. While we specifically demonstrate this on a simulated traverse and for selected examples, we stress that all groups interested in planetary surfaces in the future should consider these adaptable, low footprint and highly informative tools for future exploration.

The study of lunar plasma environment’s response to the extreme solar wind condition is the main subject of our investigation in this report. The computational model includes the self-consistent dynamics of the light (H_2+) and (He+), and heavy (Na^+}) pickup ions. The electrons are considered as a fluid. The lunar interior is considered as a weakly conducting body. The input parameters are taken from the ARTEMIS observations. The modeling demonstrates a formation of the various plasma structures near the Moon: (a) bow shock wave with split shock transition in case of extreme solar wind density and standard bulk velocity; (b) hyper-sonic/Alfvenic Mach cone in case of extreme solar wind bulk velocity and moderate solar wind density. The modeling shows a strong asymmetry in the solar wind ion VDF which connected with a plasma compression and ion reflection at the bow shock wave/Mach cone front.

The study of lunar plasma environment’s response to the magnetotail lobe condition is the main subject of our investigation in this report. Photoionization and charge exchange of protons with the lunar exosphere arethe ionization processes included in our model. The computational model includes the dynamics of heavy Na+ pickup and ambient magnetospheric ions. The electrons are considered as a fluid.The lunar interior is considered as a weakly conducting body. In this report we consider for the first time a formation of lunar plasma structures, wakes, and a generation of low-frequency electromagnetic waves by using a self-consistent hybrid kinetic modeling. The input parameters were taken from the ARTEMIS observations. At an early stage the Moon with exosphere and conducting core excites whistler waves in case of Sub-Alfvenic/sonic interaction. At a later stage an excitation of the Alfven wave is observed. The topology of the Alfven waves is approximately similar to the Alfven wing near the planetary moons (Io, Europa etc.). The physics of the Moon-magnetotail lobe interaction is also close to the physics of the interaction between plasma clouds (expanding and not expanding) and ambient magnetospheric plasma. The heavy pickup ions create a large structured halo with space scale of more than 10 R_{E} in the direction of the background field. The modeling also shows an excitation of the compressional waves due to expansion of heavy exospheric pickup ions. The lunar model with weaker interior conductivity excites lower levels of the wave activity. This work was supported by NASA Award (80NSSC20K0146) from Solar System Workings Program (NNH18ZDA001N-C.3-SSW2018). Computational resources were provided by the NASA High-End SupercomputingFacilities (Aitken-Ames, Project HEC SMD-20-02357875).