Researchers 3D print parts from recycled plastic and simulated moon dust

By the Everything Space news desk · 06 Oct 2026 · written from the sources below

Image: Phys.org

A new composite blending lunar soil simulant with recyclable high-performance plastic could cut the cost of building infrastructure on the moon.

Researchers at Concordia University have developed a composite material made from simulated lunar regolith and a recycled high-performance thermoplastic called PEKK, aiming to reduce the need to ship construction materials to the moon.

The team 3D printed test structures from the composite, including energy-absorbing 'sacrificial' components designed to deform under stress rather than serve as permanent structural parts, as well as a wrench. These were used to see how the material would handle impact forces similar to those a lunar lander's landing gear might experience.

Adding the regolith simulant to the plastic reduced shrinkage and warping during heat treatment, a useful trait for manufacturing in an environment without advanced processing equipment. The regolith also lowered the temperature at which the plastic crystallized during heating, making that process more efficient, though the resulting material was more porous and brittle than pure PEKK.

A key part of the experiment involved recycling the plastic itself. The PEKK used had already been reclaimed from a previous printed structure, and the researchers recycled it three times without seeing meaningful loss of its thermal or mechanical properties. To prepare it, the scrap plastic was shredded, ground into powder, dried, and mixed with a commercial lunar regolith simulant before being formed into filament for printing.

The researchers describe their work as one of the first demonstrations of a closed-loop process that both recycles a space-grade polymer and combines it with lunar regolith. They caution that the approach remains in early stages but say it points toward a way to make better use of limited materials during lunar missions.

Written in Everything Space’s own words by our news-desk model from the sources above, and checked against them in code: every number in this report appears in its sources, and no sentence is copied from them.