Formation of Dusty Plasma Clouds at Meteoroid Impact on the Surface of the Moon

Аннотация

The nature of two dusty plasma clouds appearing because of the impact of a meteoroid on the surface of the Moon has been discussed. It has been shown that one of the clouds is formed by particles (or fragments) of regolith ejected into free space by a shock wave induced by the meteoroid impact on the surface of the Moon and the second cloud is formed by solidified melt droplets. The main characteristics of these clouds, including the cloud expansion rates, the characteristic sizes of particles in both clouds, and the concentrations and charges of particles, have been calculated. The calculated cloud expansion rates are in qualitative agreement with the observational data.