A new variety of solar cell may hold the key to powering future lunar bases, which scientists say can be made using a surprising local ingredient: moon dust.
Leveraging resources native to the Moon significantly eliminates the costly and technically challenging requirement of transporting material from Earth to space while solving the tremendous energy needs of exploration. The new solar cell, created by German scientists, relies on simulated moon dust that efficiently converts sunlight to energy while remaining highly resistant to radiation damage.
Moon Dust as a Resource
“The solar cells used in space now are amazing, reaching efficiencies of 30% to even 40%, but that efficiency comes with a price,” says lead researcher Felix Lang of the University of Potsdam, Germany. “They are very expensive and are relatively heavy because they use glass or a thick foil as cover. It’s hard to justify lifting all these cells into space.”
The team’s work envisioned turning the lunar surface’s coating of loose dust and rocks, called regolith, into glass. By producing glass on the Moon instead of Earth, the team estimates they could reduce transport costs by 99% due to lightening a spacecraft’s launch mass by 99.4%.
According to NASA assessments, this would dramatically increase the economic viability of long-term settlements on the Moon, an essential step towards launching a crewed mission to Mars.
Building the Lunar Solar Cell
German researchers melted simulated moon dust into moon glass in an Earth laboratory, combining the moon glass with cheap yet highly effective perovskite crystals to create a finished solar cell. According to the team’s calculations, by only sending a small amount of material to finish the mound dust into solar cells, their novel development would yield 100 times as much energy as existing solar cells per gram of material sent.
“If you cut the weight by 99%, you don’t need ultra-efficient 30% solar cells, you just make more of them on the Moon,” says Lang. “Plus, our cells are more stable against radiation, while the others would degrade over time.”
The Resilient Cell
Laboratory testing demonstrated that moon glass performs better under conditions in space than on Earth. Impurities in the moon dust leave a brown tint to the glass but also serve to stabilize it against radiation. When subjected to simulated space radiation conditions, the moon glass displayed far less browning, even though glass made on Earth was initially clearer.
Producing glass on the Moon presents some unique challenges compared to earthly manufacture but has some less demanding elements. Highly concentrated sunlight can provide enough heat energy to melt moon dust into glass. Additionally, since the brown tint is a feature, not a bug, the moon dust doesn’t need to be heavily purified. At the team’s current optimization level, their solar cell operates at 10% efficiency, but they estimate that developing a clearer glass will push the efficiency to 23%.
Lunar Manufacturing
To mitigate issues with manufacturing on the Moon, the team plans to conduct a small-scale experiment on the lunar surface to test their designs. Concerns include low gravity altering glass formation, solvents not working in a vacuum, and temperature variations due to the Moon’s lack of atmosphere, leading to material instability.
“From extracting water for fuel to building houses with lunar bricks, scientists have been finding ways to use Moon dust,” says Lang. “Now, we can turn it into solar cells too, possibly providing the energy a future Moon city will need.”
The paper “Moon Photovoltaics Utilizing Lunar Regolith and Halide Perovskites” appeared on April 3, 2025, in Device.
Ryan Whalen covers science and technology for The Debrief. He holds an MA in History and a Master of Library and Information Science with a certificate in Data Science. He can be contacted at ryan@thedebrief.org, and follow him on Twitter @mdntwvlf.