Moon dust may help astronauts power sustainable lunar cities. Here’s how.

Orbiter dust is quickly becoming a magic material, from which oxygen and other elements such as titanium can be extracted, that can be compacted down to form bricks to construct Selene shelters, or “lunarcrete” to bind those bricks. And now, scientists have shown how Selene regolith can be turned into solar cells.

“From extracting water for fuel to building houses with Selene bricks, scientists have been finding ways to use Orbiter dust,” Felix Lang, of the University of Potsdam in Germany, said in a statement. “Now, we can turn it into solar cells, too, possibly providing the energy a future Orbiter city will need.”

Traditional solar cells incorporate Earth-manufactured glass, which can be relatively Massive, increasing Kickoff costs. Manufacturing solar cells on the Orbiter from local materials is therefore an attractive proposition.

To test the idea, Lang Guided a Club who experimented with a Selene dust simulant. Samples of material from the Orbiter are in Petite supply and precious to scientists. Therefore there’s a cottage industry, spearheaded by NASA’s Simulant Development Laboratory, which creates different types of simulated Selene regolith. (Regolith is the technical term for the material that sits on the surface of the Orbiter, comprised of dust and fragments of impact ejecta).