Space

‘Space Bricks’ Made by Indian Scientists Could Help Humans Live on the Moon

Another crucial step towards human outer-space habitation.
moon space bricks
Photo courtesy of Stephen Walker / Unsplash

It has been over half a century since Neil Armstrong took a giant leap for mankind and changed space travel as we knew it. Since then, space exploration has grown exponentially. With the planet's resources dwindling rapidly, scientists have only intensified their efforts in the past years to look for habitation beyond the Earth.

And now, humans have taken another essential step towards colonisation of the moon. In a new research, scientists have developed a sustainable process for building bricks for construction on the moon. A team of researchers from the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) has developed “space bricks” that can be used to assemble structures for habitation on the moon’s surface.

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This research was brought on by the fact that settlement requires structures to live in, but the cost of just sending one pound of material to outer space is incredibly expensive—about Rs 7.5 lakh (about $10,000).

True to India’s reputation of being cost-effective when it comes to its space programess, they built a sustainable solution in the form of “space bricks” which can be sourced from human urine and lunar soil. With raw materials that can be accessible in space, this considerably decreases their overall expenditure. Additionally, this innovation also has a lower carbon footprint because it uses guar gum instead of cement for support.

This research combines the two different fields of biology and mechanical engineering. The scientists used bacteria that can produce calcium carbonate through metabolic pathways and mixed it with a simulant of lunar soil. Then, they added the required urea and calcium sources along with gum extracted from locally-sourced guar beans. 

The final product obtained after a few days of incubation was found to possess significant strength and machinability. The scientists say that these bricks can also be fabricated into any freeform shape using a lathe. This is extremely useful because it completely circumvents the need for specialised moulds.

While this project is certainly very ambitious and a significant step towards constructing buildings in space, the researchers say they have quite a distance to go before they look at extra-terrestrial habitats concretely. “Our next step is to make larger bricks with a more automated and parallel production process,” said Aloke Kumar, assistant professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, IISc, and one of the researchers of this project. “Simultaneously, we would also like to enhance the strength of these bricks further and test them under varied loading conditions like impacts and possibly moonquakes.”

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