Lunar surface infrastructure / Patents pending
We build on .
An engineered high-traction surface with integrated vehicle restraint, manufactured on-site from lunar regolith.
Concept render · Space Mobility lunar highway · Patents pending
The problem
Driving on the Moon is worse than driving on ice.
Concept render · Bare regolith
A tire grips because gravity presses it into the ground. The Moon supplies one-sixth of that. The vehicle keeps all of its mass and momentum, but only a fraction of its grip, so it slides wide in corners, takes the length of a football field to stop, and bounces off every bump.
Bare regolith leaves a rover about 25% of its Earth driving capability. Glare ice on Earth does better. And every wheel turn throws abrasive dust that grinds seals, optics, radiators and suits.
The dust is the problem. The dust is also the material.
Concept render · Patents pending
Our core idea · Patents pending
Mechanical Gravity
The Moon gives you one-sixth.
The road gives you the rest.
What is Mechanical Gravity?
It is the hold that gravity would normally provide, supplied by the road instead of the planet.
The result: the rover corners, brakes and rides over bumps the way it would at home. And when conditions exceed what the road is rated for, the system lets go cleanly instead of letting the road take damage.
The numbers
The difference, drawn to scale.
A loaded 3.6 t rover at 32 km/h, on bare regolith and on our road.
Safe turning radius
32 km/hMaximum grade
drawn to scaleStopping distance
from 32 km/hDriving capability
Earth = 100%Basis: a 3.6 t loaded rover at 32 km/h. Percentages are cornering-speed and braking-distance ratios against an Earth reference of 8.83 m/s² (µ ≈ 0.9). Grade figures use tan θ = μ − Crr, with μ 0.8 and a rolling resistance coefficient of 0.03; the tether figure adds 2,500 N of commanded downforce. The bare-regolith grade is the published traverse planning limit for NASA’s VIPER rover. Road figures are engineering analysis ahead of ground validation.
Where the road goes
Unlocking water ice.
The water is at the bottom of craters, and the only way to it is down a slope. NASA plans VIPER traverses to a hard limit of 15 degrees, because above that the wheels slip and the rover slows.
Concept render · Patents pending
Low gravity does not help you climb. Gravity pulls a vehicle back down the hill and presses its wheels down for grip. Both scale together, so they cancel exactly. Climbable grade is set by the surface, on the Moon the same as on Earth.
A road’s grade is chosen. Terrain gives you the slope it has. A route is surveyed, graded and cut, so the question becomes what grade to build rather than what grade is there.
The surface is manufactured to a specification. The grip texture is identical on every element, so a route behaves the same on the hundredth pass as on the first.
On a 15 degree grade a loaded rover on the road carries better than two and a half times the traction it needs. Build the route at 30 degrees, twice what a polar traverse is planned to today, and it still carries about two to one, because the vehicle is tethered to a traveler captive inside the road and can pull itself down onto the surface. That pull is a fixed force rather than a share of weight, which is what makes it worth roughly six times more here than the same pull would be worth on Earth.
Basis: crater slopes are mean inner-wall values from Tye et al. (2015); Shackleton maximum wall slope from Zuber et al., Nature (2012). Traverse planning limit from NASA VIPER lunar operations. Road figures are calculated for a 3.6 t loaded rover at lunar gravity of 1.62 m/s² on a manufactured surface friction coefficient of 0.8, including a rolling resistance coefficient of 0.03. The 15 degree figure is the road surface alone; the 30 degree figure adds 2,500 N of commanded tether downforce, inside the coupling’s designed release threshold. Road figures are engineering analysis ahead of ground validation.
The road
One road, five jobs.
Drive like Earth. Made of Moon.
Concept render · Patents pending
Earth-class handling
Earth-class cornering, braking, climbing and ride quality at operational speeds.
Dust-free driving
Wheels never touch loose regolith. A road network is dust mitigation infrastructure.
Built-in navigation
A physical guidance path for autonomy, with no dependence on GPS, lighting or terrain perception.
Power and data corridors
Power and communications run inside the road. No separate cable campaign.
Lasting presence
A road is used by every mission that follows. Permanent infrastructure demonstrates sustained activity under the Outer Space Treaty, without a territorial claim.
Power and data
Not just a road.
The road carries power and communications inside it. One pass builds the driving surface and the utility corridor together.
Concept render · Patents pending
Built in one pass. The corridor is laid with the road, not trenched afterward.
Off the surface. Lines run inside the structure, out of the traffic path and away from loose regolith.
Grows with the network. Every new segment of road is new capacity between the places it connects.
A base runs on more than cargo. Power has to move from where it is made to where it is used, and data between everything that operates. On Earth that is a second construction campaign after the road. Here there is no second campaign, which is what makes a road critical infrastructure: everything at the base moves on it, and everything at the base connects through it.
Landing pads
NASA has written down what is missing.
Concept render · Patents pending
A pad is a plane. Flat, and flat still after repeated landings.
A foundation is a load path. Weight spread into loose ground without settling.
Shielding is held mass. Held in a form that stays where it is put.
What exists today
The field has the material.
Regolith processing is a real field with real results behind it. Sintered bricks, cast pucks, test coupons, sample slabs. The material behaves, and that is the hard half of the problem already answered by people who have been at it for years. The half still open is geometry: a tab that has to fit a socket, a profile that has to hold through the full height of a block, a face that has to come out of a mold that opens. That is the half we work on.
The position
One line. Every shape.
Concept render · Patents pending
Interlocks, not mortar
Elements engage by geometry. Nothing cures, nothing has to be mixed, and nothing has to hold in vacuum.
Re-entrant profiles
The shapes that interlock properly are the shapes a simple mold cannot release, which is a manufacturing problem and is where the work is.
Extensible by design
A route or a pad is laid element by element, so it can be extended, repaired or taken up.
Our approach
Built from the Moon, on the Moon.
Concept render · Patents pending
Local resources over launched mass. Every kilogram of road made on the Moon is a kilogram not launched.
Used by every mission after the first. A road built for one mission carries all the traffic that lands behind it.
Engineered to last. Designed as permanent infrastructure, maintained in place.
The element
The hard part is geometry (and it’s also the most useful).
Melting and sintering regolith into a material that holds up is a problem the field has largely answered. What is still open is geometry: a tab that has to fit a socket, a profile that has to hold through the full height of a block, a face that has to come out of a mold that opens.
Drag to rotate · scroll to zoom
Site Prep
Analyzed, cleared, graded, compacted.
Every site is analyzed and prepared before any element is placed.
Analysis. Slope, bearing capacity, rock distribution and subsurface conditions determine whether a site works and how much preparation it needs.
Clearing and grading. Oversize rock removed, the surface cut and filled to the design line and level.
Compaction and base course. The subgrade compacted in lifts, with screened local aggregate added where the native ground will not carry the load.
Intellectual property
Protected in layers.
Our U.S. patent filings were completed September 2026, covering the complete road system, from the surface a wheel touches to the connection with the vehicle. They are written for any low-gravity world, not only the Moon.
The manufacturing process from regolith to road is a held trade secret and in the second phase of its validation process.
Roadmap
From the lab to the lunar surface.
Concept render · Patents pending
- 2026 · NOWDesigned, filed, in validationRoad system engineered and analyzed. Patents pending. Ground validation underway.
- 2027Ground validation completeFull-scale road elements proven on Earth with partner research institutions.
- 2028–29First tile on the MoonA CLPS-class demonstration: a road element deployed on the lunar surface.
- 2030–32Full lunar highway productionOperational road network at a lunar base.
Talk to us
Planning surface operations?
Tell us about your mission or program. We typically reply within one business day.
contact@spacemobility.com