Connecting LADEE LDEX Observations of the Moon's dust cloud to the temporal and selenographic variability produced by micrometeoroid impacts from Jupiter Family Comets

Recent observations by the Lunar Dust Experiment (LDEX) on board NASA's Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) were perceived to indicate an unbalanced influence of meteoroids impacting from the Helion and the Anti-Helion directions. These observations were interpreted without proper consideration of the dynamical characteristics of the meteoroid environment and its spatio-temporal influence on the Moon's surface. In this work, a dynamical model of meteoroids originating from Jupiter Family Comets is utilized to model the secondary dust ejecta cloud engulfing the Moon. It is shown that the combination of the dynamical properties of these meteoroids, together with the orbital geometry of LADEE, introduce a bias in the observations and causes LADEE LDEX to be more sensitive to the Helion source. This effect must be considered in order to draw accurate conclusions regarding the meteoroid environment and its influence on the Moon's surface.