Will China be able to build its base on the moon using lunar soil? To try to answer this question, China has just sent bricks made of this innovative material into space to test them.
A cargo rocket carrying brick samples blasted off on the evening of November 15 to 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 Wenchang Satellite Launch Center on Friday evening to deliver supplies to its Tiangong (Heavenly Palace) orbital space station," state news agency Xinhua reported, citing referred to the Chinese Space Agency.
In recent decades, China has invested billions of euros in its space program to catch up with the United States and Russia.
Several brick samples of different composition 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 Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan, whose team of researchers developed the bricks.
"We're going to put them outside the space station and leave them there exposed to the elements" to "see if their performance degrades or not," he explains.
According to the team, any material on the moon would have to face extreme conditions.
This also takes into account the temperature, which can vary dramatically, potentially from -190°C to +180°C.
Second, since 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 various types of bricks from materials available on Earth, including basalt.
They were inspired by the material collected by China's Chang'e-5 probe, which at the end of 2022 was the world's first mission in 4 decades to bring back 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 Chen 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 various types of constructions," Zhou Cheng explains.
Making bricks directly on the moon is "an obvious thing to try because it's much cheaper to use locally available materials than to have to deliver them from Earth by spacecraft," says Jako van Loon, professor in Astrophysics at Keele University (UK).
"The Chinese experiment has a good chance of success, and the results will pave the way for the construction of 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 US 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 on how to assemble bricks, taking inspiration from the Lego structure.
China's project, called the International Lunar Research Station (ILRS), is a joint venture with Russia.
According to official media, about 10 countries - including Thailand, Pakistan, Venezuela and Senegal - and about 40 foreign organizations are partners in the initiative. | BGNES
