Patent — available for licensing
Advanced Thermal Management for ISRU (In-Situ Resource Utilization) Additive Manufacturing
A NASA invention available to explore as a licensing opportunity.
About this technology
Overview
Establishing sustainable lunar infrastructure requires the ability to manufacture structural components using local resources. However, existing laser-based additive manufacturing approaches for regolith face significant challenges. The complex mixture of ceramics, metals, metal oxides, and minerals that constitute regolith causes each constituent to undergo independent phase transitions during laser processing. Current methods require energy-intensive pre-processing steps such as sieving, material distillation, or ball milling to achieve uniform particle distributions. Many approaches also depend on chemical binders or additives, which must be transported from Earth. These limitations make existing regolith AM techniques impractical for sustained surface operations. In response to these challenges, researchers at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center developed Additive Manufacturing of Glass-Ceramics from Regolith. The methodology uses precisely controlled heating and cooling rates, coordinated scan patterns, and strategic dwell times to manage the sequential phases of vitrification, Transforming raw regolith into fully dense, high-strength structural components without additives or pre-processing. The process produces glass and glass ceramic parts with compressive strengths exceeding 17,000 psi that enable direct fabrication of habitats, landing pads, and mission-critical infrastructure from in-situ materials.