Lunar Regolith
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The layer of debris which blankets most of the moon is commonly refered to as regolith. Billions of years of bombardment from space has created a highly comminuted (this means it has been broken into ever smaller grains and particles) surface through a process sometimes referered to as "impact gardening" or "space weathering." It is estimated that the regolith varies in thickness from 3 to 5 meters over the younger "maria" to approximatly 10 to 20 meters thick in the older "highlands." Below the impact regolith is a layer of "mega-regolith" consisting of highly fractered bedrock that is tens of kilometers thick.
The portion of the regolith of a size less than 1cm is generally referred to as Lunar Soil, and the portion
Lunar regolith is the focus of many proposed methods if in-situ resource utilization including:
External Links
ISRU on the Moon. by Larry Taylor http://www.lpi.usra.edu/lunar_knowledge/LTaylor.pdf
