Open Access

Johanna Bürger, Bastian Gundlach, Jürgen Blum, Paul Hayne, Matthias Läuter, Tobias Kramer

• The Moon as our nearest celestial object is one of the most important bodies for space resource exploration and planetary science. However, knowledge of the physical properties of the lunar regolith is required for the exploitation of lunar resources and for understanding the Moon's geologic history. This knowledge comes mainly from Apollo in-situ experiments and returned samples, but the global distribution of these properties is still poorly understood. Remote sensing measurements offer the opportunity to derive properties of unsampled areas with the help of models. In our study, a microphysical thermal model for the lunar regolith was developed and the simulated surface temperatures were compared with thermal emission measurements from the Diviner radiometer on board the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) to derive regolith properties. This work expands upon previous investigations of lunar regolith properties using Diviner data, by more directly simulating physical properties such as particle size and porosity.