China begins experiment to create bricks for moon base from lunar soil

China will continue work on the construction of the first lunar base, starting a space experiment to test whether the station blocks can be made from lunar soil. This UNN writes with reference to phys.org.

Details

Samples of the bricks will be sent aboard a cargo rocket bound for China's Tiangong space station, part of Beijing's mission to land humans on the moon by 2030 and establish a permanent base there by 2035.

The structure will have to withstand huge amounts of cosmic radiation, extreme temperature differences from 180 to -190 degrees Celsius and lunar tremors, and getting building materials there is an expensive procedure.

Scientists from a university in the central province of Wuhan hope that building a base on the moon could be a solution to these problems.

They have created a series of prototype bricks made from different compositions of materials found on Earth, such as basalt, that mimic the properties of the lunar soil. The impact experiment will last three years, with samples sent out for testing each year.

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A team led by Zhou Cheng, a professor at Huazhong University of Science and Technology, developed the prototype bricks after analyzing soil delivered by China's Chang'e-5 probe, the world's first mission to collect samples from the moon in four decades.

He said the resulting black bricks are three times stronger than standard bricks and bond together without the use of a bonding agent.

The team also worked on the Moon Spider, a 3D printed robot for building structures in space, some of which are conical in shape.

Recall

Japan is discussing with the United States to land its first astronaut on the moon as part of the Artemis program, which aims to carry out a lunar mission by 2025.

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