CERBERUZ: Composites for Extraterrestrial Recycling By Engineering the Reuse and Upcycling of Zotek

Overview

CERBERUZ delivers a fully integrated, end-to-end recycling and manufacturing pipeline for some of the Moon’s most challenging waste streams—thermoset foams and mixed thermoplastics. CERBERUZ stands for ‘Composites for Extraterrestrial Recycling By Engineering the Reuse and Upcycling of Zotek’. The project was one of the 13 Phase I winners out of 1,200 submissions to the 2025 NASA LunaRecycle Centennial Challenge. One of the hardest materials to recycle is ZOTEK F30 foam. Rather than water-intensive or chemical depolymerization processes, CERBERUZ relies on mechanical and plasma-based methods that run solely on power, produce zero secondary contaminants, and leverage the lunar vacuum and regolith for on-demand manufacturing.

The final outputs are regolith-derived molds, composite 3D-printer filament, injection-molded parts, and cast aluminum components.

Team

The CERBERUZ effort was spearheaded by MIT Graduate student co-leads Lanie McKinney, Palak B. Patel, Jose Soto, and Lilly Etzenbach, whose interdisciplinary coordination—from plasma cleaning to ISRU-based mold fabrication and expertise in systems engineering—ensured a cohesive architecture. Team members included Brady Cruse, Ariella Blackman, Hillel Dei, Jonatan Fontanez, and Jiali Ma; Prof. Jeffrey Hoffman and I served as faculty advisors.