MIT team wins Phase 1 of NASA’s LunaRecycle Challenge

The MIT student team formed in AeroAstro’s Space Resources Workshop has been selected as one of just thirteen winners in Phase 1 of NASA’s LunaRecycle Challenge, earning funding to develop a prototype system for Phase 2. The team’s concept CERBERUZ (Composites for Extraterrestrial Recycling By Engineering the Reuse and Upcycling of Zotek) advanced out of more than 200 qualifying submissions from individuals, companies, and university groups.

The challenge tasked teams with designing recycling solutions for non-metabolic waste that would accumulate over long-duration missions to the Moon, Mars, and planets beyond. CERBERUZ utilizes hard-to-recycle foam panels as a reinforcing filler material to create novel thermoplastic-matrix composite materials. The proposed manufacturing ecosystem includes injection molding, filament extrusion, and casting, allowing the use of recycle plastics, foam, and metals into standard parts and additive manufacturing feedstock, and leverages ISRU to create regolith molds. To improve the material quality of manufactured parts, the team is also testing nonthermal plasma technology to clean items prior to recycling.

Stay tuned for CERBERUZ Phase 2!

Team Leads: Lanie McKinney, Palak Patel, Jose Soto, Lilly Etzenbach
Team Members: Brady Cruse, Hillel Dei, Jonatan Fontanes, Ariella Blackman, Jiali Ma
Advisors: Dr. George Lordos, Prof. Jeff Hoffman