The MIT student team CERBERUZ won first prize in both the Prototype and Digital Twin tracks of NASA's LunaRecycle Challenge, part of the agency's Centennial Challenges series, MIT reported on Oct. 20, 2026. The competition targeted systems that reuse, recycle or upcycle space waste for longer lunar missions.

CERBERUZ separates non-biological waste into thermoplastics and other materials, grinds everything into powder, then melts and injection-molds the mixture into composite parts. The approach incorporates Zotek F30, an aerospace packaging foam the report says has no established recycling solutions, even on Earth, as a reinforcing filler. Lead advisor George Lordos said recycling waste into such parts could reduce materials launched from Earth. The team designed the process around lunar constraints, using mechanical methods powered by electricity without water-intensive processes or chemical depolymerization. Its DEIMOS digital twin models how recycled-material combinations behave during manufacturing.

The work described was a competition demonstration on Earth aimed at future lunar use, not an operating lunar waste-processing system. The report says the team earned $925,000 in prize money over the challenge and that the win capped nearly two years of work, following a 2025 Phase 1 win and a final demonstration in summer 2026.