Associate for Education and Public Outreach

Satoshi Tanaka

  (田中 智)

Profile Information

Affiliation
Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency

J-GLOBAL ID
202101003233791434
researchmap Member ID
R000016248

Papers

 1
  • Naoya Sakatani, Satoshi Tanaka, Sota Arakawa
    International Journal of Thermophysics, 43(6), Jun, 2022  Peer-reviewed
    The thermal conductivity of planetary soils, or regolith, is essential for understanding the present global thermal state of bodies. The thermal conductivity of lunar soils is important with respect to lunar crustal heat flow. Although in situ measurements were performed by the Apollo 15 and 17 missions, laboratory measurements of the returned lunar samples have not reproduced the estimated subsurface values. Since the amount of extraterrestrial soil samples is limited, a small apparatus is needed to measure their thermal conductivity. In this study, we developed an apparatus enabling the measurement of the thermal conductivity of a small amount of soil (< 10 g) via the line heat source method as a function of compressional pressure under vacuum conditions. The thermal conductivity of glass beads and lunar regolith simulant derived by the new apparatus is higher than that obtained from the larger line heat source, and then, reliable apparatus. To evaluate the experimental results, we performed numerical simulation of the temperature evolution during the line heat source measurement, and found that the thermal conductivity derived from the simulation data is higher than the input thermal conductivity. This is consistent with the experimental results and is caused by the heat loss through a line heat source with a limited length. The difference depends on the contact conductance between the sample and the line heat source, and the calibration factors for each sample are determined.

Research Projects

 5