The Lunar Regolith Structure and Electromagnetic Properties of Chang’E-5 Landing Site

Abstract

On 1 December 2020, China’s Chang’E-5 (CE-5) probe successfully landed in the northeastern Oceanus Procellarum. This work mainly presents the results of Lunar Regolith Penetrating Radar (LRPR) equipped on the CE-5 Lander. The lunar regolith structure of the landing site from the surface to 3-m depth is unveiled by LRPR, which found that abundant rock fragments are distributed in uniform lunar regolith. The imaging result proved that the drilling and sampling process was prevented by big rocks at about 100 cm depth. On the basis of the response of lunar soil to electromagnetic (EM) wave, the EM properties of the landing site estimate that the relative dielectric constant and the loss tangent are 2.520 ± 0.186 and 0.0133 ± 0.0020, respectively.