A cargo rocket carrying samples of the bricks blasted off on the evening of 15 November towards the Tiangong space station as part of Beijing's mission to send humans to the Moon by 2030 and build a permanent base there by 2035.
"China launched the Tianzhou-8 cargo ship from the Satellite Launch Center in Wenchang on Friday evening to deliver supplies to its orbiting Tiangong (Heavenly Palace) space station," state news agency Xinhua reported, citing the China Aerospace Exploration Agency.
China has invested billions of euros in its space programme in recent decades to catch up with the United States and Russia.
Several samples of bricks with different compositions will be subjected to extreme conditions similar to those found on the moon.
"The main purpose is to expose them to space conditions," said Zhou Cheng, a professor at Wuhan's Huazhong University of Science and Technology, whose team of researchers developed the bricks.
"We'll put them outside the space station and leave them there, exposed to the elements" to "see if their performance deteriorates or not," he explains.
According to the team, any material on the moon will have to face extreme conditions.
This includes the temperature, which can vary dramatically, potentially from -190°C to +180°C.
Secondly, because the Moon is not protected by an atmosphere, it is exposed to a large amount of cosmic radiation and micrometeorites. Lunar earthquakes can also weaken structures built on its soil.
Zhou Cheng and his colleagues have developed a technique to produce different types of bricks from materials available on Earth, including basalt.
They took inspiration from the material collected by China's Chang'e-5 probe, which in late 2022 was the world's first mission in four decades to deliver lunar soil.
The black bricks are three times stronger than standard bricks and can be placed inside each other, eliminating the need for binders, which would be a challenge on the moon, Zhou Cheng said.
The team has also developed a 3D printing robot to build habitats.
"The goal in the future is to use in situ (local) lunar soil resources to make different types of structures," Zhou Cheng explained.
Making bricks directly on the moon is something "obvious to try because it's much cheaper to use materials available in situ than having to ship them from Earth in spacecraft," saysJaco van Loon, professor of astrophysics at Keele University (UK).
"The Chinese experiment has a good chance of success and the results will pave the way for building lunar bases," he believes.
Other countries with ambitions to build a lunar base are working on creating bricks that mimic lunar soil.
As part of NASA's Artemis program, which hopes to return humans to the moon in 2026, researchers at the University of Central Florida are testing bricks made with 3D printers.
The European Space Agency (ESA) has conducted research into how to assemble the bricks, taking inspiration from the Lego structure.
China's project, called the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS), is a joint effort with Russia.
According to official media, about 10 countries - including Thailand, Pakistan, Venezuela and Senegal - and about 40 foreign organisations are partners in the initiative. | BGNES
