Chinese scientists plan to send bricks made from simulated lunar soil into space to see how they hold up in extreme conditions – and if they can be used to build a research base on the moon.
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The sample bricks will be sent to the Tiangong space station next month on the Tianzhou-8 cargo spacecraft, according to Ding Lieyun, an expert in intelligent construction from Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan.
Ding and his team will observe how the samples degrade under radiation and temperature changes in a three-year experiment.
“We can bake the bricks to a strength of 100 megapascals here on Earth, which is much harder than concrete,” Ding, who heads the university’s National Centre of Technology Innovation for Digital Construction, told a live audience during a show aired by state broadcaster CCTV on Sunday.
But he said research was needed to determine whether the bricks could withstand the harsh environment on the moon.