High porosity chained aggregates from the topsoil of the lunar regolith dust

The unusual behaviour of fine lunar regolith like stickiness and low heat conductivity is dominated by the structural arrangement of its finest fraction. Here, we show the previously unknown phenomenon of a globular 3D superstructure within the dust fraction of regolith. A study using the recently developed Transmission X-ray Microscopy (TXM) with tomographic reconstruction reveals a highly porous network of cellular voids in the finest dust fraction aggregates in lunar soil. Such porous chained aggregates are composed of sub-micron particles that form a network of cellular voids a few micrometers in diameter. Discovery of such a superstructure within the finest fraction of lunar topsoil enables a model of heat transfer to be constructed.