Measurement of the three-dimensional shape and size distribution of 17 lunar regolith simulants: Simulant shape and size inter-comparison and simulant shape comparison with Apollo 11 and Apollo 14 lunar regolith

Published

July 1, 2025

Author(s)

Edward Garboczi, Ann Debay, Orion Kafka, Newell Moser, Douglas Rickman, Ryan Wilkerson

Abstract

Lunar regolith simulants are manufactured in order to provide a higher volume, much less expensive and more available source of material, compared to real lunar regolith material, upon which to test various instruments and machines that are being designed to operate on the lunar surface. There are many sources of these materials. However, the three-dimensional (3D) shape of these materials has been rarely characterized and compared to each other and to real lunar regolith material. The focus of this paper is to provide 3D shape and size distribution of 17 different simulants, use this data to compare these materials against each other, and provide this data in a NIST database. Over 1.1M particles are in this database, with their 3D shape stored as STL files. With the recent publication of 3D characterizations of lunar regolith material from the Apollo 11 and Apollo 14 missions, these characterizations can also be compared to equivalent data for the real lunar regolith material. Both mare and highland simulants are studied using graphical comparisons as well as size and shape figure of merit analysis.

Citation

Icarus

Volume

434

Pub Type

Journals

Download Paper

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.icarus.2025.116542

Local Download

Keywords

lunar regolith, simulants, particle shape, particle size, figure of merit, mare, highland

Citation

Garboczi, E. , Debay, A. , Kafka, O. , Moser, N. , Rickman, D. and Wilkerson, R. (2025), Measurement of the three-dimensional shape and size distribution of 17 lunar regolith simulants: Simulant shape and size inter-comparison and simulant shape comparison with Apollo 11 and Apollo 14 lunar regolith, Icarus, [online], https://doi.org/10.1016/j.icarus.2025.116542, https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=958211 (Accessed September 30, 2025)