Space/Science — HabitableZone

Space/Science

snow

How long would it take for snow to evaporate on the lunar surface near the equator during the lunar day?

Would it take about the same amount time as snow placed on the ground near sea level on the equator on Earth during the daytime?
Or significantly more or less time.

If you had dump truck loads of snow brought from the mountains to a desert which had daytime temperatures of around 90 F and the skies were cloudless, but relatively windless, how long would the snow last before it melted?

Which are major factors which would cause it melt, the amount solar radiation per sq meter or air temperature.

Suppose you had a average nighttime air temperature of 70 F- how quickly would snow melt without the sunlight during the nite. Compared to say an average air temperature of 40 F during the daylight on a cloudless and windless day.

On the moon one has more solar radiation per sq meter than on Earth, but there isn't anything amounting to an air temperature.

According to this reference:
http://www.asi.org/adb/m/03/05/average-temperatures.html

The moon's average daytime temperature is 107 C, but a meter below the lunar regolith it's -35 C. One could guess that if you put a bunch snow on the lunar surface and then covered it with a meter of regolith the snow that it would last quite a long time [weeks/years perhaps decades or longer].

The moon's average nighttime temperature is -153 C, though if dug a meter down into the regolith you would a have toasty temperature of around -35 C.

Now, let's take a fairly small crater on the moon, which is say 100' in diameter with the average crater bottom 10' deep. Dump a large quantity snow so that the snow is 3' deep in the crater basin.
And suppose you were filling this crater with snow during the last twilight hours of the lunar day. During the 14 days of lunar night, I don't think the snow would evaporate much and at least on the surface layer of the snow, it should get to be somewhere around -150 C.
Now, the question is how long does this snow remain starting from the beginning of the lunar day that will then last about 14 days?

Would all of the snow evaporate in less than 14 days?
Would most of the snow evaporate in the 14 days?
Or would say a 1/3 or less of it evaporate in the 14 days?

Another interesting element to add to this is what if you were to dust the top of the snow with thin layer of lunar regolith? What affect would this have on it's evaporation rate?
Another question is would one have a "micro" water vapor atmosphere above and within the snow- and would that have much affect?

A different but related issue is suppose one had a very large quantity of water on moon. And this water temperature was say 70 F. And it was pressurized and connected to a fire hose so that one would have about 80 psi coming out of the spray nozzle. You have all this on the rim of a crater which is say, 1 km in diameter and tens of meters deep. You point the spray nozzle down so if the stream went straight it would hit the base of crater rim about km away. Then you turn on the tap. What happens?

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