Keynote contribution

Planetary Rock Mechanics and Future Prospects

Ömer Aydan

Proceedings
EUROCK 2026
Pages
17-32
Submitted
6 May 2026
Accepted
15 June 2026
Published
12 August 2026

Summary

Abstract

There is recently an increasing interest to explore the ways to find out the characteristics of other planets and possibility of exploiting their mineral resources. Images from Mars particularly show the striking similarities between rocks on Earth and those of Mars. One can easily notice layered rock masses, jointing, weathering effects and some slope stability issues such as plane and wedge sliding, block and flexural toppling type failures.

The dynamics issues in Mars, Moon and Venus and other planetary objects remain to be the similar to those on Earth. Although mankind has no direct access to Mars yet, the exploration rovers, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and InSight Lander provided very valuable data so that some dynamics issues should be recognized.

Low gravity planetary bodies such as comets and asteroids have been great interest to mankind since early times. Attempts to bring materials from several asteroids were recently successful and they may provide important information on the characteristics and how to mine the asteroids. Furthermore, some familiar phenomena of slope failures, sinkholes, debris flow and boulder toppling under low gravitational environment are observed at these low gravity bodies.

This keynote lecture covers thoughts of the author on the aspects of planetary rock mechanics and rock engineering deducted from the images sent to the earth from Mars, Moon and Venus by exploration rovers and from comets and asteroids from spacecrafts. Particularly the images from Mars are spectacular to imagine and infer many aspects planetary rock mechanics and resemblances of rocks and their weathering, discontinuity formations, slope stability problems and natural caves lead to mankind contemplate possible mechanics and material behavior of rocks and their related scientific and engineering aspects.

Contributors

Authors

  1. Ömer Aydan University of the Ryukyus, Nishihara, Okinawa, Japan ORCID 0000-0002-7304-6486

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References

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