From Waste to Lunar Infrastructure: Building Autonomous Recycling Systems for the Moon

Abstract:  

Sustained lunar exploration will require systems that turn local resources and mission waste into useful products while minimizing imported mass, energy demand, and astronaut time. This seminar follows Cislune’s work translating lunar resource-utilization concepts into tested hardware, measurement-rich digital twins, and increasingly autonomous operations. Using examples from NASA challenges and related development programs, Erik Franks will discuss low-temperature thermal processing, materials forming, regolith beneficiation, process instrumentation, and the engineering tradeoffs behind converting waste and lunar materials into feedstocks, construction products, and future metal and oxygen resources. The talk will also cover practical lessons from building a space-technology startup: moving from analysis to hardware, designing evidence-driven tests, working within safety and program constraints, and developing systems that can scale from terrestrial prototypes to lunar operations.

Bio:

Erik Franks is the founder and CEO of Cislune, a space-technology company developing robotic systems for lunar resource prospecting, extraction, processing, construction, and surface operations. He has led teams in NASA’s Break the Ice Lunar Challenge and LunaRecycle Challenge and supports NASA and commercial programs involving lunar in-situ resource utilization, autonomy, digital twins, and regolith processing. His work focuses on translating ambitious space architectures into testable hardware, disciplined field demonstrations, and commercially useful lunar capabilities.