Project RegoLight was an in situ resource utilization program funded by the European Commission to study automation of a process using solar energy to heat lunar soil to form building elements for a lunar settlement. The project ran from 2016 – 2018 and was intended to raise the technology readiness level from 3 to 5. The conclusions of the project were presented at the 69th International Astronautical Congress (IAC) held in Bremen, Germany in October 2018 and summarized in a report available on Academia.edu.
RegoLight had several primary objectives including automation of additive manufacturing of building elements under ambient conditions, fabrication of larger structures with a mobile printing head, demonstration of solar sintering under vacuum conditions, production of building elements using simulated lunar soil, material characterization of the building elements and other related processes in the context of a lunar settlement architecture. These activities would support plans for the Moon Village.
