Abstract We present laboratory results to address dust charging and lofting on the Moon and other airless planetary bodies in response to time‐varying solar wind and ultraviolet (UV) exposure. In these experiments, dust is exposed to an electron beam that varies in beam energy between 40 and 260 eV as a function of time. Dust plumes occur during when the beam energy is rising or falling, which causes plasma sheath transitions from a monotonic to non‐monotonic/inverse profile or vice versa. These sheath transitions change the secondary electron emission, intermittently resulting in maximum microcavity charging and, subsequently, the generation of dust plumes. The sheath profile changes are dependent on the surface charging history, showing a hysteresis effect with increasing/decreasing electron beam energy.