The Tiny Ionosphere of the Moon Studied by virtue of the SMART-1 signals

An exceptional opportunity to study the tiny lunar ionosphere became available in the spring of 2006. In fact the European Probe SMART-1, then in orbit around the Moon, would have crashed on the Moon surface on Sunday, September 3. While most scientists declared their interest to observe SMART-1 especially during its final crash, our team gathered radio data in S-band from the occultations of SMART-1 by the Moon during the week prior to the crash (August 29 thru September 3, 2006). These occultations were observed by virtue of the two 32meter dishes of INAF (the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics) located in Medicina (near Bologna) and in Noto (in Sicily). This paper is an updated description of our observations, but not a model of the lunar ionosphere yet.