Scientists from Ohio State University have shown that laser 3D printing could be used to turn Moon dust into viable lunar buildings. Not only would this be cost-effective once set up, but the resulting structures could be extremely durable, heat-resistant, and non-toxic.<\/p>\n
In a process called In-Situ Resource Utilization (<\/a>ISRU), such a technique would dispense with the need to ship building materials to the Moon to build future long-term bases. <\/p>\n If realized, this technology could be used in future manned missions to build things like habitats, tools, landing pads, radiation shields, and other vital structural components.<\/p>\n For reference, Moon dust (referred to as regolith<\/a>) tends to be extremely fine-grained and usually sharp and highly abrasive. It is also glassy in appearance and tends to be basalt-rich (a kind of igneous rock), especially in the so-called \u201chighlands\u201d and \u201cmare\u201d regions of the Moon.<\/p>\n While very common on the Moon, on Earth, lunar regolith is in very short supply. For this reason, the team was required to use synthetic simulations of it to test their new technology.<\/p>\n To this end, they used something called LHS-1, which mimics lunar highland regolith very closely. Using this, the team spread the dust in a thin layer and then fired a high-energy laser at it.<\/p>\n Using the Moon to build on the Moon<\/p>\n This melts the particles in the dust, enabling them to fuse. Once cooled and solidified, the team then added additional layers of dust and repeated the process ad infinitum. <\/p>\n The result material is a ceramic-like substance that is very strong, heat-resistant, and very durable. They also discovered that the process can be completed on a variety of surfaces, like stainless steel, glass, and even alumina-silicate ceramic.<\/p>\n According to the team, they found that the moon dust ceramic generally sticks very poorly to steel and glass, but adheres very well to other non-lunar regolith ceramics.<\/p>\n This is not much of a surprise, as alumina-silicate tends to form compatible crystalline structures with the melted regolith. Using it as a base improves the final product\u2019s mechanical strength, thermal shock resistance, and structural stability.<\/p>\n The team also played around with other environmental factors like oxygen levels and laser power. They found that the new material seems to be extremely sensitive to environmental conditions, which is an important finding, as for the process to be useful, it would need to work in the \u201creal world\u201d outside of a lab.<\/p>\n