Madison Fihon is the founder of Space Copy, a company building rugged 3D printers designed to convert waste materials, including lunar regolith, plastics, metals and industrial scrap, into usable infrastructure, tools and vehicle parts. Founded in Edmonton in 2022, the company now operates across the US, Canada and Europe. Before starting Space Copy, Fihon spent six years as a non-civil servant contractor with NASA, beginning at age 16, working across heliophysics, astrophysics and planetary science with the NESS program, where she helped evaluate funding priorities and watched 3D printing rise from a minor to a top three priority. In the conversation she explains how lunar soil behaves like a high temperature ceramic, why shipping costs of 1.2 million dollars per kilogram to the moon make on site manufacturing essential, and how similar logistics problems exist in mining, wildfire recovery and disaster zones on Earth. She also discusses winning the Buzz Aldrin Foundation award, lessons from Harvard Business School, the autonomy stack behind her printers, and an upcoming NASA Marshall Space Flight Center launch under a Phase 2 Lunar Recycle contract.
A former NASA contractor turned founder explains how her Edmonton startup 3D prints infrastructure from moon dust and Earth waste alike.
What was it like working for NASA starting at age 16?
I worked as a non-civil servant contractor, basically like a government contractor role, weighing in on which technologies and satellites got funded each fiscal year. I worked in heliophysics, astrophysics and planetary science under the NESS program even though I wasn't classically trained in those fields. I helped with early development on the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope. It was six years of immersive learning that shaped everything I built with Space Copy.
What was the exact moment you realized the shipping cost problem was bigger than the instrument problem?
At NASA I saw annual decadal survey data ranking priorities for space activities. When I started, 3D printing was a top 30 priority because launch costs to the moon are 1.2 million dollars per kilogram, and keeping four astronauts alive for a year takes 23,000 kilograms. By the time I left NASA, additive manufacturing had moved from a top 30 priority to a top three priority.
Why start Space Copy in Edmonton instead of a traditional aerospace hub?
Plain and simple, that's where I grew up. 3D printing and aerospace were hobbies that became career prospects. We got head hunted by Techstars while still in Edmonton and decided to go with the flow. Edmonton turned out to have a surprising aerospace community, with companies like Wyvern and various conferences, so we built locally before eventually shifting commercial focus to the US and Europe.
What does printing from local materials actually mean in practice?
We can print over 60 materials across a dozen environments. Lunar regolith has a chemical composition similar to ceramic, high in silica, similar to desert or beach sand. We do autonomous material characterization through sensors to find redundancies across materials, then print at temperatures suited to that behavior, sometimes adding composites or reinforcements since raw regolith prints can be brittle.
What non-space application convinced you this was a real business?
I kept hearing about waste to value from communities like Jasper and Fort McMurray affected by wildfires and floods. Mine tailings, for example, are scrap that can't be processed into usable ore and cost mining operators millions to dispose of. Remote logistics on Earth can cost 10,000 dollars per kilogram, so turning that waste into infrastructure made obvious sense once we talked to customers.
What did winning the Buzz Aldrin Foundation award change for the company practically?
It was through a program called Space Tank, kind of a Shark Tank for the space industry. Beyond meeting the Aldrin family, it gave us global reach and community. Tech is a black and white industry where you need a network to play, and that stage gave us access to people who became employees, customers and friends we wouldn't have found otherwise.
What founding belief about space infrastructure do most people in the industry still not accept?
People still think 3D printing is just for hobbyists making keychains, not realizing it is a scaling commercial-ready industry in aerospace. There's also a real disconnect between the public and deep tech, people don't realize how many everyday products exist because NASA commercialized technology first, and that gap in understanding hasn't improved much.
What did NASA push you to prove that you didn't expect on the Lunar ReCycle contract?
We built an initial prototype about a year and a half ago, then NASA called and said they wanted us to rebuild and demo it in five months based on our proposal. Lunar ReCycle is about converting scrap like aviation foam, cargo transfer bags, lunar soil and aluminum into infrastructure under near space conditions, and we're launching it at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center next month.
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