Felix Lang is the lead author of the study and said that silicon-based solar panels used in space are “amazing”, reaching efficiencies between 30% and 40%. However, they are expensive. The solar cells are heavy due to the thick foil or glass used as a covering. “It is hard to justify lifting these cells into space,” said he.

Harnessing regolith from the Moon could be a game changer. Researchers found that by creating moonglass on the lunar surface, and combining it with a thin coating of perovskite brought from Earth they could reduce launch mass by 95%.

Building Solar Panels on the Moon

According to the researchers, once the materials have been collected, they would only require “minimal equipment” to turn them into solar cells on the Moon, since they can be made from raw regolith, which does not need to be processed. The team claims they have already achieved promising outcomes by using a large mirror and sunlight to concentrate a beam hotter than required to melt regolith to make moonglass. Moonglass is milky-white, not transparent, because it’s made from raw regolith. This limits its light-harvesting ability. The best prototypes of the Potsdam team achieved about 12% efficiency – roughly half that for conventional perovskite cell. Simulations suggest that they could eventually achieve the same efficiency as conventional perovskite cell. Nicholas Bennett, University of Technology Sydney, told

New Scientist this is the first time moonglass has been successfully used in a working solar cell. He says the real challenge is to produce large quantities outside the lab. Moonglass panels

are the latest high-tech bid to lay the foundations of a permanent human presence in the Moon. Other projects include building oxygen extract systems out of regolith and building space mirrors that melt the Moon’s Ice into drinking water. Space age technologies are coming to Earth at the TNW Conference,which will take place in Amsterdam on June 19-20. Tickets for the event are now availableUse the code TNWXMEDIA2025 to get 30% off.