Characterization, Transport Modeling, and Image Analysis of Rover-Terrain Interaction for Lunar Regolith In-Situ Resource Utilization

Author

• Luke A. Manolescu, Clemson UniversityFollow

Date of Award

8-2026

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

Department

Civil Engineering

Committee Chair/Advisor

Dr. Qiushi Chen

Committee Member

Dr. M.Z. Naser

Committee Member

Dr. Laura Redmond

Abstract

NASA has declared a return to the lunar surface and the need and demand for sophisticated In-situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) is the highest in history. ISRU will require regolith excavation, transport, and processing in order to harvest the valuable resources available, support surface operations, and keep astronauts alive. Characterizing the lunar regolith is essential to understanding the mechanical and physical behavior of the material that will be used to construct berms and structurally support astronaut habitats and landers. Any construction on Earth requires an in-depth geotechnical site assessment prior to any construction to rule out any potential site issues that would cause failure. If site issues are present, mitigation and improvement efforts would be taken to ensure safe construction. This type of analysis would be extremely difficult, costly, and likely take longer to organize than the Moon Base architecture timeline for landing on the Moon. This means that not only will factors of safety for surface infrastructure need to be very high, but great care and time must be taken to fully understand the lunar regolith behavior and characteristics to ensure there is no catastrophic regolith failure. A large challenge for these analyses and research efforts on Earth is the difficulty of replicating the lunar environment in a lab setting. This leads to digital particle-scale analysis which will allow for an understanding of regolith in this unique lunar environment. Simulations in lunar-g and under vacuum will provide a more accurate representation of regolith behavior on the Moon and the finer tuned ground operations such as regolith transportation. Image-based methods are another potential key. By utilizing existing hardware like cameras for other purposes, data collection potential is maximized and the need for using valuable payload mass for geotechnical tools is reduced.

The first study of this thesis focuses on lunar regolith simulant characterization work, full PSD curves and failure envelopes were created for LHS-1, LSP-2, and BP-1 after extensive sieve, hydrometer, and direct shear analyses were conducted under various compactions and confining stresses. This work will be crucial to validating other characterization data, but also enables engineers to better understand the simulants so heavily used in hardware testing and other experiments that frame future lunar exploration.

The second study focuses on optimizing the Vertical Lunar Regolith Conveyor and the stick-slip dynamic motion. Several simulations were conducted using the CAD file of a single-loop of the VLRC corkscrew provided by NASA Kennedy Space Center (KSC). These simulations had varying gravitational conditions, stick-slip frequencies, and levels of cohesion between particles. Ultimately, it was found that the stick-slip dynamic motion threshold for efficient regolith transport under Earth gravity and lunar gravity was 4.0~Hz and 2.5~Hz, respectively.

In the final image-processing analysis study, high quality grayscale image pairs of man-made rover tracks were taken by a set of Thorlabs CMOS cameras. These image pairs were fed into a Visual Geometry Grounded Transformer, a University of Oxford and Meta AI model that reconstructs 3D point clouds from image pairs. This point cloud was then ported and using Python, particular points were targeted to get an approximate rover track depth. This information is extremely useful as it can be used in future applications to make an association between rover track depth and geotechnical properties.

Overall, this thesis contributes heavily to the ongoing work in ISRU. The VLRC is hardware that is likely to be placed on the lunar surface, so this research provides options for test engineers at KSC to consider dynamic motion options that can put less stress on actuators and save surface power. Further understanding regolith simulants, ISRU hardware, and finding other uses for existing camera technology fits directly in the overall NASA objective to support a future sustainable lunar settlement and contributes to the body of lunar research.

Recommended Citation

Manolescu, Luke A., "Characterization, Transport Modeling, and Image Analysis of Rover-Terrain Interaction for Lunar Regolith In-Situ Resource Utilization" (2026). All Theses. 4807.
https://open.clemson.edu/all_theses/4807