About the model
Lunar Water Migration Simulation
This interactive Three.js visualization combines lunar illumination, measured surface temperatures, and a particle model of thermally driven water migration. Molecules remain adsorbed on the terrain until thermal desorption launches them, follow ballistic trajectories, and adsorb again when they return to the surface.
Physical Model
- Surface temperature is spatially and temporally interpolated from 24 Diviner snapshots as the subsolar longitude advances.
- Desorption follows the exponential rate and timestep survival probability used by Peschel et al. (2026).
- Adsorption energies follow the truncated exponential fit from Schörghofer (2023), with
E_p = 0.65 eV, W = 0.22 eV, and an upper limit of 1.55 eV.
- Launch velocities are sampled from the Maxwell-Boltzmann flux distribution and oriented with the local terrain normal.
- Flights are integrated in two-second steps with velocity-Verlet integration under three-dimensional central lunar gravity. A molecule adsorbs when it intersects the terrain. Particles with escape trajectories are removed from active simulation.
Data Sources
- Surface temperatures: Diviner Level 4 raster snapshots.
- Surface color: the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter Camera Wide Angle Camera mosaic distributed through NASA's CGI Moon Kit.
- Terrain elevation: the Lunar Orbiter Laser Altimeter gridded digital elevation model distributed through NASA's CGI Moon Kit.
Project
Explore the implementation, simulation equations, shaders, and processed datasets in the GitHub source code.