[P-PS08] Lunar Science and Exploration

[PPS08-P08] Lunar Surface Temperature Indicator: Prototyping an API for Lunar Rover Traverse Planning

*Risa Sato¹, Hirohide Demura¹, Koichiro Ibuka¹, Makiko Ohtake¹ (1.University of Aizu)

Keywords:Rover, Path planning, The Moon, API, Surface temperature, Explorations

The surface temperature of the Moon varies dramatically, making it essential to consider temperature planning paths for rover-based lunar explorations. Therefore, this study has developed a web API that outputs temperature based on input geographical coordinates and UTC (Coordinated Universal Time). Precomputed temperatures are stored in a database, allowing for faster retrieval of required temperature data. Keeping temperatures for all geographical coordinates and at all times would result in a data volume that is too large. The database has the surface temperature of a virtual lunar sphere. The geometry between the Sun and the local location controls the surface temperature. We retrieve the surface temperature of the local location as the value assigned to that of the same geometry. To account for topography, latitude and local solar time are converted to the site with the exact geometry location based on the slope to retrieve the temperature. As a result, while the API successfully provides temperature for any given geographical coordinate and UTC, the accuracy in high-latitude regions was insufficient. A different approach should be taken to improve the accuracy in the high-latitude regions.