Enabling & Support
22/04/2026
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Once Artemis returns humans to the Moon, the next challenge will be to learn how to live on the lunar surface. Astronauts will need to maintain, repair and eventually build the systems that keep them alive and connected, many of which rely on electronic circuits.
Sending replacement parts from Earth is expensive and slow – so what if the Moon itself could provide the raw materials? A new ESA Discovery project led by the Danish Technological Institute (DTI) is investigating turning lunar regolith – the layer of fragmented rock that covers the Moon’s surface – into the conductive inks and powders needed to print electronic components directly on the Moon.
The ‘Regolith to Repairs: ISRU for Additive Manufacturing of Electronics’ project builds on an established and elegant idea. Lunar regolith contains 40–45% oxygen by weight, chemically bound within its mineral structure. Extracting that oxygen, which could be used for rocket propulsion or to supply breathable air to astronauts, leaves behind a metal-rich residue. Rather than treating that residue as waste, this project asks whether it could be transformed into something far more useful: the building blocks of electronics.
From oxygen extraction to printed circuits
From lunar regolith to printed electronics
The oxygen extraction process at the heart of the project is molten salt electrolysis, a technique in which regolith is immersed in a calcium chloride electrolyte heated to between 800°C and 1000°C. When a voltage is applied, oxygen is released from the material, leaving a mixture of metal alloys behind. UK-based company Metalysis, a global leader in the reduction of lunar regolith, has been refining this process in collaboration with ESA and the UK Space Agency since 2019, and is supplying simulated regolith – both in its original and de-oxygenated forms – for the project’s experiments.
DTI brings specialist expertise in synthesising conductive materials and formulating printable inks and metal powders. In this project, DTI is developing methods to take the metal-rich residue left over after oxygen extraction and convert it into two distinct products: conductive inks suitable for printing electronic circuits and metallic powders for 3D printing larger components.
The case for in-situ manufacturing
The economic logic is compelling. “Every time you want to send a kilo into space, you need 15 kilos of fuel to move it,” explains Christian Dalsgaard, Senior Consultant at DTI and the project’s principal investigator. “There is an enormous advantage in being able to utilise local materials available on the Moon – for example, to repair critical parts.”
The ability to manufacture electronic components on site would give future lunar missions a degree of autonomy that is simply not possible when every spare part must be shipped from Earth. From repairing planetary robots and maintaining electrical systems in habitats, to building communications networks and supporting scientific instruments, the applications are broad.
“The primary innovation of the project is converting the conductive part of regolith into a digitally printable material,” says Dalsgaard. “This opens completely new opportunities for off-Earth manufacturing of electronics for future space missions.”
Dr Rita Palumbo, Advanced Manufacturing of Electronics specialist at ESA, says: “The farther humankind ventures into space, the less we can afford to carry everything we need from Earth. Advanced Manufacturing of Electronics is one of the areas ESA is exploring to understand how future missions might build, repair and adapt electronics, whether in orbit or far beyond it.”
Proving the concept
To demonstrate that the approach is viable, DTI and Metalysis will produce conductive raw material from de-oxygenated simulated regolith and test it in an additive manufacturing context designed to reflect conditions on the Moon. “We produce conductive inks and powder and test that they can be used to additively manufacture a piece of conductive wire,” explains Andreas Weje Larsen, 3D printing specialist at DTI. “By doing this, we demonstrate that the conductive powder can, for example, be used to manufacture antennas directly on the Moon.”
The project is a proof of concept, but the ambitions extend well beyond it. DTI sees this as the first step in a broader programme of work to unlock the potential of regolith as a raw material for electrical components – with major producers of aerospace and defence technology already showing strong interest in the technology.
The project was submitted through ESA’s Open Space Innovation Platform (OSIP), which seeks out promising new ideas for space research, and is funded by the Discovery element of ESA’s Basic Activities.
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