A team of researchers from the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bengaluru has developed a sustainable process to make space bricks on the lunar surface.
Salient Features
The process enables making load bearing bricks by using lunar soil, bacteria and guar beans.
Named as space bricks, it could be used to assemble structures for habitation on the moon surface in future.
Sending bricks from Earth is not viable as it takes Rs 7.5 lakh to transport one pound of construction material.
The process developed now uses urea sourced from human urine, which could be mixed with lunar soil to build structures on the moon.
This decreases the overall expenditure considerably.
Since guar gum is used instead of cement, there will be a lower carbon footprint. The bacteria is added to further crystalise the brick in any shape needed.
