Transporting material from Earth to the moon is an expensive proposition: by some estimates, moving a single kilogram can cost upwards of $1 million . Any plan to build a permanent human habitat up there will depend on bringing that sky-high cost down.
Engineers and planners have long eyed lunar regolith — the small, sharp rocky shards and dust that cover the moon’s surface — as an invaluable and abundant printing ingredient. Now, a Concordia study shows how combining regolith with recycled high-performance plastic could be used to 3D print components on-site for future lunar missions.
The researchers created a composite using lunar regolith stimulant and a recycled, high-performance thermoplastic known as poly(ether ketone ketone), or PEKK. They then used the composite to successfully 3D print components designed to absorb energy and deform under load rather than serve as permanent structural components. These structures, known as sacrificial structures, were used to measure how well the composite could withstand stresses, similar to those the landing mechanism of a lunar module would have to absorb on impact.
They also produced a wrench made of the same composite material. They found the added lunar regolith helped reduce shrinkage and warping during heat treatment. This advantage is an important one for manufacturing on the moon, the researchers say, where there is little to no access to equipment for further processing.
The study was conducted by Farshad Malekpour , MASc 2026, and Mehdi Hojjati , a professor in the Department of Mechanical, Industrial and Aerospace Engineering . It was published in Composites Part B: Engineering .
Crucially, the PEKK used in these demonstrations had been recycled from a previous sacrificial structure, proving that it can be processed and reused while retaining its thermal and mechanical properties. The researchers recycled the material three times without observing any significant degradation or loss of its structural and mechanical properties.
The collected PEKK scrap was shredded, milled into a powder, heat dried and then mixed with a commercially available lunar regolith simulant. The resulting material was made into filament and 3D printed into standard shapes and a sacrificial structure: in this case, a strong, lightweight, sponge-like configuration designed to let plastics bend and bounce back to their original shapes without damage.
The researchers tested how the material responded to heat, stretching, bending and compression. They also heat-treated some samples to see how this additional processing affected their performance.
The recycled composite showed thermal stability and the regolith particles were found to have been evenly distributed through the plastic. Adding regolith simulant also lowered the temperature at which PEKK crystallized during heating, making the heat treatment process more efficient. However, the composite had more internal porosity than unmixed PEKK, making it more brittle. They note that the recycled plastic itself was not degraded.
The researchers say this study is among the first to demonstrate a closed-loop approach that combines the recycling of high-performance, space-grade polymer with lunar regolith.
They note that while the technology is still very new, it offers a promising pathway to efficient use of scarce materials in space exploration.
Read the paper: “ Circular additive manufacturing of recycled PEKK-regolith composites for sacrificial structures in lunar in-situ resource utilization ”
Composites
10.1016/j.compositesb.2026.114013
Experimental study
Not applicable
Circular additive manufacturing of recycled PEKK–regolith composites for sacrificial structures in lunar in-situ resource utilization
25-Jul-2026
The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper.