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Active TRL 5 (started at 5, targeting 6)
The Sintering End Effector for Regolith (SEER) is a robust and durable robotic end effector designed to enable additive construction on the Moon using concentrated solar energy to melt and fuse lunar regolith into horizontal and vertical structures without the need for additives or binders from Earth. SEER accepts sunlight from a primary solar concentrator and increases solar concentration by between 4x and 11x. The system enables selective solar sintering and selective solar melting of multi-layer structures made exclusively from a lunar regolith feedstock without the need for binders or additives. The highly scalable and versatile technology aims to support NASA’s Artemis program through the utilization of lunar resources to establish permanent infrastructure on the Moon. Structures that can potentially be produced by SEER include landing pads, habitats, and dust-free zones on the lunar surface.
Problem Statement A decades-long problem, rapid overheating and optics failure has prevented the use of secondary solar concentrators in high-temperature space applications. Secondary solar concentrators could be used only for seconds to minutes at a time prior to failure. SEER, however, can operate continuously without the optic overheating. By eliminating the need for additional binders or additives, SEER incorporates a particle feed subsystem to continuously deposit lunar regolith to the end effector for heating and melting to construct lunar structures. This particle feed subsystem prevents clogging, enabling the continuous flow of regolith in lunar gravity and provides direct control over the mass flowrate of regolith feedstock through the system.
SEER aims to help NASA establish permanent infrastructure on the Moon in support of its Artemis program by minimizing launch mass and the related costs for constructing landing pads, roadways, habitats, and other lunar surface assets.
Technology Maturation The continuous, metered flow of poorly graded regolith through the SEER system is highly dependent upon gravity with very little experimental, numerical, or analytical work to help inform design decisions and gauge reliability. Reduced gravity experiments are required to address these technical challenges and to establish appropriate scaling relationships of the system for its ultimate deployment on the Moon. These design, validation, and demonstration experiments will be conducted during these parabolic flight tests under 1/6 g (i.e., lunar gravity) conditions. The experiments are expected to provide critical data on the flowability of regolith in a granular feed system designed for a wide range of lunar operations, which additionally include material sampling applications, additive manufacturing applications utilizing lunar regolith as the feedstock material, and large-scale systems for extracting oxygen from regolith on the Moon.
The SEER regolith feed subsystem is currently at TRL 5. In order to progress the regolith feed subsystem to TRL 6, parabolic flight testing will be performed to provide the relevant operational environment. This flight testing aims to enable the deployment of the SEER system on the Moon.
Summary of 5/18/2025 Flight Test
Outward Technologies successfully demonstrated its Sintering End Effector for Regolith (SEER) through controlled experiments under lunar gravity and vacuum conditions during parabolic flights provided by Zero-Gravity Corporation, with funding through NASA Flight Opportunities and the NASA SBIR Phase II-E program. The SEER technology enables the controlled deposition and melting of lunar regolith as the exclusive building material for constructing lunar landing pads, roadways, building foundations, and habitats. Parabolic flight testing was conducted for technology maturation of these systems and methods to enable their ultimate deployment on the Moon for controlled melting of lunar soil with concentrated sunlight in a layer-wise additive construction process. These experiments conducted under lunar gravity and vacuum conditions successfully advanced the regolith deposition subsystem of SEER to Technology Readiness Level 6 by demonstrating controlled and continuous flow of lunar regolith geotechnical simulants in a representative lunar environment.
- Robust and durable: Enables additive construction using the Sun and regolith to build structures on the Moon without overheating and failure - Scalable and versatile: Uses lunar resources to establish a variety of permanent infrastructures on the Moon (e.g., landing pads, habitats)
Future Customers
- Enable ISRU to build necessary structures on the Moon
- Could be further developed to extract oxygen and metals from lunar regolith, powered by concentrated solar energy.
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