China is advancing its plans to establish the first lunar base, with an ambitious in-space experiment set to launch this Friday. The experiment will test whether bricks for the lunar base could be made from the Moon’s own soil. A series of brick samples will be sent aboard a cargo rocket to China’s Tiangong space station as part of its broader lunar ambitions, which include sending humans to the Moon by 2030 and establishing a permanent base there by 2035.
The challenge of constructing a base on the Moon is immense. The harsh lunar environment, with extreme temperature variations, cosmic radiation, and moonquakes, poses serious challenges for any structure. Transporting building materials from Earth would be costly, so scientists from Wuhan’s Huazhong University of Science and Technology have proposed a solution: using lunar soil itself to create the building materials.
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The scientists have developed prototype bricks using materials like basalt, which mimic the properties of lunar soil. The bricks will undergo rigorous tests once they reach space to assess their durability under extreme conditions. The experiment will monitor whether the materials degrade under the harsh space environment, including temperature fluctuations ranging from 180°C to -190°C, cosmic radiation, micrometeorites, and moonquakes. The experiment is set to last for three years, with annual tests to assess performance.
The bricks are made from soil samples brought back by China’s Chang’e-5 probe, the first mission in four decades to collect Moon samples. These bricks are claimed to be three times stronger than regular bricks and interlock without the need for a binding agent. In addition, China has developed a 3D printing robot, the “Lunar Spider,” designed to build structures on the Moon using lunar resources.
The idea of building structures directly from lunar soil is seen as a crucial cost-saving measure. Using Moon materials would eliminate the need to transport resources from Earth, making lunar construction significantly more feasible and economical in the long term.
