Light Scattering From High-Porosity 3D Simulants of the Lunar Regolith at Small Phase Angles

Abstract

Lunar regolith consists of unconsolidated grains with high porosity, called the fairy castle structure. It is closely linked to the lunar opposition effect, which is the effect where brightness sharply increases as the phase angle approaches 0$°$. However, owing to the Earth's gravity, it is difficult to reproduce the structure to study the physical characteristics of the lunar fairy castle structure in the laboratory. We designed a lunar fairy castle structure model for 3D printing. These models had high porosity and were simplified to tree-like shapes. Various porous conditions of the surface were considered, represented by the number of trees, maximum trunk length, and maximum branch angle. In this study, a laboratory experiment was conducted to measure the reflectance of simulants with a fairy castle structure within a small phase angle range from 1.4$°$ to 5.0$°$. The result is analyzed for the sample porosity with the tangential slope of the reflectance S$\left(\alpha \right)$, which denotes the strength of the opposition effect. In addition, the results of this study were compared with lunar observation data. The porous samples exhibited a relatively large S$\left(\alpha \right)$ value. The influence of branch length and attachment angle was very weak in this study. Samples with a porosity between 0.78 and 0.82 represent the similar S$\left(\alpha \right)$ values to the lunar observation data, a mean porosity of lunar regolith. In conclusion, our findings suggest a potential correlation between porosity and the opposition effect in printed samples, proposing a new research approach for understanding the lunar opposition effect.