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Three dimensional shape and size X-ray CT database for 1.1 million particles from 17 different lunar regolith simulants

Published by National Institute of Standards and Technology | National Institute of Standards and Technology | Metadata Last Checked: August 02, 2025 | Last Modified: 2024-04-04 00:00:00
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 never been characterized and used to compare to each other and to real lunar regolith material brought back from the Apollo missions. The focus of this database is to provide 3D shape and size information for each of 17 lunar regolith materials (8 mare, 9 highland). Over 1.1 million particles are in this database, with their 3D shape stored as STL files. Geometric information about each particle is in the database, as well as the original X-ray CT images from which the particles were extracted.

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