The research project “Moon Mapping” has been established in 2014 between the Italian and Chinese Governments to promote cooperation and exchange between students from both countries. The main aim is to analyze different kinds of remotely-sensed data collected over the Moon surface by the Chinese space missions Chang’E-1/2. The project coordination has been assigned to the Italian Space Agency for the Italian side and to the Center of Space Exploration, China Ministry of Education, for the Chinese side.
The results of the “Moon Mapping” project topic #1: “map of the solar wind ion” using data from Chang’E-1 satellite are summarized.
Chang’E-1 is a lunar orbiter, the revolution period is 2h and the orbit is polar. The satellite is equipped with two Solar Wind Ion Detectors (SWIDs) that are two perpendicular electrostatic spectrometers mapping the sky with 24 channels with a field of view of 15°x6° each.
The spectrometers can measure solar wind flux in the range 40eV/q – 17keV/q with an energy resolution of 8%.
The data collected by the two Solar Wind Ion Detectors are analyzed to characterize the solar wind flux and composition on the Moon surface, studying the large time variation due to to the Solar activity.
The data measured by Chang’E-1, as compared with the one measured in the same period by the electrostatic spectrometers onboard the ACE satellite, enrich the multi-messenger/multi-particle view of the Sun, gathering valuable information about the space weather outside the Earth magnetosphere.