Our team presented the first results of VOLARIS at the European Lunar Symposium in Münster, Germany. The poster investigates how lunar regolith surface roughness and particle shape control micro-shadowing, a key factor governing local temperature variations and thus the stability and migration of water on the Moon, using 3D surface scans of regolith simulants combined with particle-packing simulations and ray-casting shadow calculations. Results show that particle shape strongly affects shadowed area, but simple spherical or ellipsoidal models cannot fully reproduce measured shadowing, highlighting the need for more realistic particle geometries and dedicated experiments to better constrain micro-scale volatile transport.
Amorós-Trepat, M., Brecher J. N., and Peschel, A., and Reiss, P. (2025). 3D Scanning and modelling of regolith simulant to characterise surface structures and micro-shadowing, European Lunar Symposium, Münster, 22–27 June 2025, https://doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.15480155.