Lunar Forge unveils plan to build lunar structures from moon dust
Lunar Forge · Lockheed Martin · Westinghouse Electric · Intuitive Machines
Startup Lunar Forge came out of stealth with laser-sintering tech that turns lunar regolith into structures, starting with reactor housing.
what happened
Per Payload, Lunar Forge came out of stealth with a laser-sintering process that fuses lunar regolith into solid structures without full melting, reporting lab compressive strengths of over 200 MPa and up to 345 MPa in some samples. The company is raising $7 million in pre-seed funding, expects roughly $160 million in capital over three years, and is targeting a first lunar-surface demonstration in 2027 en route to fully operational fission-reactor housing before 2030.
why it matters
Lunar Forge is pitching regolith construction as a way around the roughly $1 million-per-kilogram cost of shipping building material to the Moon, and is targeting NASA Fission Surface Power contractors Lockheed Martin, Westinghouse Electric, and the Intuitive Machines-X-Energy joint venture IX as customers for reactor housing and shielding.
for who
Lunar infrastructure and in-situ resource utilization watchers
signal-to-noise
quick facts
- Companies
- Lunar Forge, Lockheed Martin, Westinghouse Electric, Intuitive Machines
- Category
- product
- Impact
- notable
- SNR
- 2 / 5
- Event date
- 2026-07-01
- Published
- 2026-07-06 12:46 UTC