Chinese scientists recently unveiled an innovative brick type that they hope will be used to build the world’s first base and inhabitable houses on the surface of the moon in the near future.

It’s no secret that China has big plans when it comes to moon colonization. Earlier this year, it became the first country to land a probe on the dark side of the moon and bring it back with valuable soil samples, and putting people on the moon appears to be the next logical step. However, the Asian giant is already planning for the day when we’ll be able to build bases and other buildings on the Earth’s natural satellite, and to that end, it has developed an ingenious type of brick designed to withstand both physical pressure and high levels of radiation from the sun. The so-called “moon soil bricks” will be sent to the moon to be tested until the end of next year.

Moon soil bricks were developed by a team of experts at the National Digital Construction Technology Innovation Center of Huazhong University of Science and Technology. They have a mortise and tenon structure to make them easier to assemble and are meant to simulate the composition of lunar soil. However, experts claim that it is essential for moon soil bricks to have certain properties.

For example, the compressive strength of lunar soil bricks is more than three times that of ordinary red bricks and concrete bricks, which is equivalent to being able to withstand a weight of more than one ton per square centimeter. Also, since the moon is a vacuum environment and there is a large amount of cosmic radiation, researchers want to understand whether lunar soil bricks can withstand the effects of cosmic radiation on the moon.

 

The world’s first moon soil bricks will be sent to the Chinese space station on the Tianzhou-8 cargo spacecraft. They will be tested extensively until the end of next year when Chinese scientists hope to know whether the new bricks are fit for lunar development.