Lunar study casts doubt on why the Moon glows

Science : Many planets with an atmosphere have a faint illumination or glow that can be seen on the horizon. Apollo 8 astronaut James Lovell saw something similar when his spacecraft went around the Moon in 1968, but the Moon has no atmosphere to catch the Sun’s rays and create such a spectacle. Data collected by the Lunar Ejecta and Meteorites (LEAM) experiment, placed on the Moon in 1972, suggested that lunar dust was picking up an electric charge from cosmic rays or the solar wind to drive it high into the lunar sky and cause the glow. But now former Apollo physicist Brian O’Brien, who helped design dust monitors for several of the Apollo spacecraft, argues in Planetary and Space Science that much of the LEAM data were not detections of charged lunar dust particles but instead electrical interference generated by the Apollo Lunar Surface Experiments Package (ALSEP) instruments parked 7.5 meters away from LEAM. A final answer may be provided by NASA’s Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer, which launches in 2013.