China's lunar 3D printing tech paves way for moon ‘houses'

Arab Times

02-07-2025

HEFEI, July 2, (Xinhua): A groundbreaking 3D printing system developed by Chinese scientists has explored using only on-site-sourced lunar soil to build habitats, paving the way for the large-scale, on-site construction of lunar research stations. The Deep Space Exploration Laboratory in Hefei, Anhui Province, has successfully prototyped a lunar regolith 3D printer that eliminates the need for Earth sourced construction materials, according to Yang Honglun, a senior engineer at the lab.
He revealed that the system uses a high-precision reflective concentrator and flexible fiber-optic energy transmission to achieve temperatures hot enough to fuse lunar regolith. 'This printing breakthrough has validated the feasibility of using lunar soil as the sole raw building material, enabling true in-situ resource utilization and eliminating the need to transport any additional materials from Earth,' he said. Also among the printing system's key innovations is flexible manufacturing, which enables brick production and the customized molding of complex structures.
A preliminary test of the prototype's lunar regolith forming process has been completed on the ground surface. Tests of its ability to melt and form lines, surfaces, bodies and complex structures have also been completed, and tests of the technical feasibility of the prototype's solar concentrating technology, optical fiber bundle energy transmission and lunar regolith melting system have been systematically completed. In the early stages of the research team's work, the core challenge was achieving reliable solar energy concentration and regolith shaping under the extreme conditions of the lunar environment.