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Roads on the Moon: Space Mobility Unveils “Mechanical Gravity” and a Patent-Pending Lunar Road System
A road system for the Moon, built on site from regolith, that returns a rover to about 99 percent of its Earth driving capability.
Roads on the Moon: Space Mobility Unveils “Mechanical Gravity” and a Patent-Pending Lunar Road System
A road system for the Moon, built on site from regolith, that returns a rover to about 99 percent of its Earth driving capability.
Driving a rover on the Moon is harder than driving on black ice. Space Mobility fixes that. On bare regolith a rover is slow to stop, slides around, and keeps about 25 percent of its Earth driving capability. On the Space Mobility road, built on site from Moon dust, “Mechanical Gravity” restores handling to 99 percent of what it has on Earth. Patents pending; ground validation underway; first tile deployed on the Moon targeted for 2028.
Thomas Shaffer, founder and chief executive officer of Space Mobility, on building roads on the Moon from lunar regolith. From the Atoms Not Bits interview, October 2026. Watch on YouTube.
EL SEGUNDO, Calif., Oct. 27, 2026
Space Mobility, Inc. came out of stealth with its first piece of lunar infrastructure, a road system for the Moon: interlocking tiles made on site from lunar regolith through in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) that return a Moon rover to about 99 percent of its Earth driving capability, from about 25 percent on bare lunar regolith.
“The industry is about to put humans and $200 million vehicles on a surface that behaves worse than ice, in one-sixth gravity. Our roads are made from the Moon, for the Moon, and they hold the rover down the way Earth’s gravity holds a car to a highway. We call that Mechanical Gravity. We finished the engineering ahead of schedule this year and filed our intellectual property. Now we are validating it on the ground and accelerating toward lunar deployment.” Thomas Shaffer, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Space Mobility
Rover makers, lander providers, surface-construction researchers and agencies planning surface operations: contact Space Mobility at contact@spacemobility.com.
Everything that will work on the Moon’s surface moves on wheels: crewed lunar rovers, cargo haulers, construction equipment and the robots that service them. On bare regolith a 3.6 metric ton rover at 32 km/h holds a corner at about 0.57 meters per second squared, needs a turning radius of about 139 meters and roughly 70 meters to stop. Glare ice supports nearly twice that cornering force. The dust the wheels throw abrades seals, coats radiators and follows the crew inside.
The Space Mobility road answers these issues with moon roads and what the company calls Mechanical Gravity. Each road tile carries a high-traction driving surface and a recessed guide channel. A sled rides captive in the channel, tethered to the vehicle, so the road holds the vehicle down and on line the way Earth’s gravity holds a car to a highway, with a force-limited release that protects the road. Wheels never touch loose regolith, the channel gives autonomous lunar rovers and transport vehicles a fixed path that needs no navigation signal or lighting, and conduits inside the road tiles carry power and communications along the route.
A provisional patent application filed in September 2026 covers the system’s invention families in 185 claims. Ground validation is underway, and the company is working toward a first tile deployed on the Moon in 2028.
| 3.6 metric ton rover at 32 km/h | Bare regolith | Space Mobility road |
|---|---|---|
| Cornering | ~ 0.57 m/s² | ~ 8.7 m/s² |
| Turning radius | ~ 139 m | ~ 9 m |
| Stopping distance | ~ 70 m | ~ 4.5 m with channel brake |
| Earth driving capability | ~ 25 percent | ~ 99 percent |
To extend ground validation, Space Mobility has formed research relationships with two large United States universities in space resources and aerospace engineering, a move that Shaffer says will “allow Space Mobility to efficiently accelerate the pace of our research and deployment.”
On October 23, NASA laid out an accelerated Artemis schedule that targets astronauts on the lunar surface in 2028 and described the goal as moving from “a small scientific outpost” toward “something that may one day resemble a city on the lunar surface.”
“Space Mobility is accelerating to meet that challenge head on, in partnership with large and well-resourced universities based here in the US that specialize in space resources and aerospace. This will allow us to put roads and critical infrastructure on the lunar surface in 2028.” Thomas Shaffer
The same line that forms a road tile forms landing pad segments, habitat foundations and shielding blocks; the shape changes and the process does not. NASA’s 2026 Civil Space Shortfalls list, published in January, gives a full section to deploying, assembling and constructing complex structures on the lunar surface, from landing pads and site preparation (4.01) to load-bearing structures (4.02), autonomous assembly (4.03) and advanced manufacturing (4.04), and separately names crew mobility for lunar traverses (1.05). Space Mobility is building toward those needs with lunar surface construction that uses what is already on the ground.
“Melting and sintering regolith into a material that holds up is a problem the field has largely answered,” says Deven O’Rourke, Space Resources Engineer at Space Mobility.
“Geometry is the half still open: 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, and the road is where you can see it.” Deven O’Rourke, Space Resources Engineer, Space Mobility
Space Mobility is founder-led. Shaffer has founded and scaled companies in solar, telecommunications, enterprise security, healthcare and education, with three successful exits. The road system was engineered with an artificial intelligence model as the company’s computational engineering partner, working with its space resources lead engineer and its intellectual property team, and every performance figure was derived from a validated model of the as-built tile.
Space Mobility is growing its engineering team. Kevin Cannon, a space-industry veteran and expert in lunar in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) manufacturing, joins the company as Chief Technology Officer on November 1, and the company is recruiting engineers in space resources and mechanical engineering. Candidates can write to talent@spacemobility.com.
Space Mobility’s roadmap: 2026, designed, filed and in validation; 2027, ground validation complete; 2028, first demonstration tile deployed on the Moon; 2030 to 2032, full lunar highway production and surface construction for the permanent Moon base.
Basis for performance figures: percentages are cornering-speed and braking-distance ratios for a 3.6 metric ton rover at 32 km/h against an Earth reference.
About Space Mobility, Inc.
Space Mobility engineers lunar infrastructure for the permanent Moon base from the material found on the lunar surface: roads, landing pads, habitat foundations and shielding. Based in El Segundo, California, the company holds patents pending on its lunar road system and is registered to contract with the United States government. spacemobility.com. Follow Founder Thomas Shaffer on X at @RoadsontheMoon.
Media contact
Thomas Shaffer, Founder and CEO
Space Mobility, Inc.
contact@spacemobility.com
310.986.8996
VIDEO: Atoms Not Bits: America’s newest infrastructure company wants to build roads on the Moon
Thomas Shaffer on turning lunar regolith into roads, and why traction is what everything on the surface depends on.
VIDEO: Atoms Not Bits: America’s newest infrastructure company wants to build roads on the Moon
Thomas Shaffer on turning lunar regolith into roads, and why traction is what everything on the surface depends on.
Founder and chief executive officer Thomas Shaffer on turning lunar regolith into roads, and why traction is the thing every rover, astronaut and machine on the surface depends on.