The ratio of 40 Ar/ 36 Ar trapped within lunar grains, commonly known as the lunar antiquity indicator, is an important semi -empirical method for dating the time at which lunar samples were exposed to the solar wind. The behavior of the antiquity indicator is governed by the relative implantation fluxes of solar wind -derived 36 Ar ions and indigenously sourced lunar exospheric 40 Ar ions. Previous explanations for the behavior of the antiquity indicator have assumed constancy in both the solar wind ion precipitation and exospheric ion recycling fluxes; however, the presence of a lunar paleomagnetosphere likely invalidates these assumptions. Furthermore, most astrophysical models of stellar evolution suggest that the solar wind flux should have been significantly higher in the past, which would also affect the behavior of the antiquity indicator. Here, we use numerical simulations to explore the behavior of solar wind 36 Ar ions and lunar exospheric 40 Ar ions in the presence of lunar paleomagnetic fields of varying strengths. We find that paleomagnetic fields suppress the solar wind 36 Ar flux by up to an order -of -magnitude while slightly enhancing the recycling flux of lunar exospheric 40 Ar ions. We also find that at an epoch of similar to 2 Gya, the suppression of solar wind 36 Ar access to the lunar surface by a lunar paleomagnetosphere is - somewhat fortuitously - nearly equally balanced by the expected increase in the upstream solar wind flux. These counterbalancing effects suggest that the lunar paleomagnetosphere played a critical role in preserving the correlation between the antiquity indicator and the radioactive decay profile of indigenous lunar 40 K. Thus, a key implication of these findings is that the accuracy of the 40 Ar/ 36 Ar indicator for any lunar sample may be strongly influenced by the poorly constrained history of the lunar magnetic field.

Understanding the sources of lunar water is crucial for studying the history of lunar evolution, as well as the interaction of solar wind with the Moon and other airless bodies. Recent orbital spectral observations revealed that the solar wind is a significant exogenous driver of lunar surficial hydration. However, the solar wind is shielded over a period of 3-5 days per month as the Moon passes through the Earth's magnetosphere, during which a significant loss of hydration is expected. Here we report the temporal and spatial distribution of polar surficial OH/H2O abundance, using Chandrayaan-1 Moon Mineralogy Mapper (M-3) data, which covers the regions inside/outside the Earth's magnetosphere. The data shows that polar surficial OH/H2O abundance increases with latitude, and that the probability of polar surficial OH/H2O abundance remains at the same level when in the solar wind and in the magnetosphere by controlling latitude, composition, and lunar local time. This indicates that the OH/H2O abundance in the polar regions may be saturated, or supplemented from other possible sources, such as Earth wind (particles from the magnetosphere, distinct from the solar wind), which may compensate for thermal diffusion losses while the Moon lies within the Earth's magnetosphere. This work provides some clues for studies of planet-moon systems, whereby the planetary wind serves as a bridge connecting the planet with its moons.

In this chapter, we review the contribution of space missions to the determination of the elemental and isotopic composition of Earth, Moon and the terrestrial planets, with special emphasis on currently planned and future missions. We show how these missions are going to significantly contribute to, or sometimes revolutionise, our understanding of planetary evolution, from formation to the possible emergence of life. We start with the Earth, which is a unique habitable body with actual life, and that is strongly related to its atmosphere. The new wave of missions to the Moon is then reviewed, which are going to study its formation history, the structure and dynamics of its tenuous exosphere and the interaction of the Moon's surface and exosphere with the different sources of plasma and radiation of its environment, including the solar wind and the escaping Earth's upper atmosphere. Missions to study the noble gas atmospheres of the terrestrial planets, Venus and Mars, are then examined. These missions are expected to trace the evolutionary paths of these two noble gas atmospheres, with a special emphasis on understanding the effect of atmospheric escape on the fate of water. Future missions to these planets will be key to help us establishing a comparative view of the evolution of climates and habitability at Earth, Venus and Mars, one of the most important and challenging open questions of planetary science. Finally, as the detection and characterisation of exoplanets is currently revolutionising the scope of planetary science, we review the missions aiming to characterise the internal structure and the atmospheres of these exoplanets.

The outer planets of our solar system Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune are fascinating objects on their own. Their intrinsic magnetic fields form magnetic environments (so called magnetospheres) in which charged and neutral particles and dust are produced, lost or being transported through the system. These magnetic environments of the gas giants can be envisaged as huge plasma laboratories in space in which electromagnetic waves, current systems, particle transport mechanisms, acceleration processes and other phenomena act and interact with the large number of moons in orbit around those massive planets. In general it is necessary to describe and study the global environments (magnetospheres) of the gas giants, its global configuration with its large-scale transport processes; and, in combination, to study the local environments of the moons as well, e.g. the interaction processes between the magnetospheric plasma and the exosphere/atmosphere/magnetosphere of the moon acting on time scales of seconds to days. These local exchange processes include also the gravity, shape, rotation, astrometric observations and orbital parameters of the icy moons in those huge systems. It is the purpose of this chapter of the book to describe the variety of the magnetic environments of the outer planets in a broad overview, globally and locally, and to show that those exchange processes can dramatically influence the surfaces and exospheres/atmospheres of the moons and they can also be used as a tool to study the overall physics of systems as a whole.