Measurement of ultra‐heavy cosmic rays at a lunar base

Abstract

A wealth of information regarding cosmic ray synthesis and propagation is contained in the ultra‐heavy (Z≳60) cosmic ray abundances; to extract this information, however, requires a detector capable of acquiring large statistics for these rare particles, as well as a charge resolution adequate to separate neighboring charge peaks at very large Z. A large, passive surface array of nuclear‐track‐detecting glass plates would meet these requirements. These glass plates could be periodically processe and analyzed for tracks at a lunar base, then melted/annealed for reuse in a continuously recycled detector array.