Can we create buildings out of moon dust?

When people take up residence in space, it raises special demands. Even when the trip is just to the Moon or to Mars, we need protection in the form of buildings with the right conditions indoors if we are to survive.

However, the cost of bringing building materials to the Moon is sky-high. Right now, it costs up to $1 million, or about $6.5 million, for NASA to have one kilogram of material delivered to the Moon by suppliers such as Intuitive Machines or Firefly Aerospace.
SpaceX hopes to bring this price down to $100,000 per kilogram with the reusable Starship-freighter, but it will not happen any time soon.

»So, the idea is that we gradually start building habitats using the resources that already exist on the Moon, that is, moon dust. Therefore, we want to melt the moon dust and use it to build bricks« explains Mohamad Bayat, Associate Professor at DTU Construct at the Technical University of Denmark.

»The challenge is that when you melt things in low-pressure environments, the process becomes much more difficult to control. Just as water boils at lower temperatures on top of a high mountain, molten lunar dust will evaporate more easily and violently on the Moon, which has no atmospheric pressure at all« he adds. 

With a Sapere Aude-grant from Independent Research Fund Denmark, Mohamad Bayat will lead a research project that will try to uncover what happens when you try to melt moon dust using a laser under low atmospheric pressure.
The research could also benefit other technologies that melt materials in a vacuum, such as 3D printing of metals, vacuum welding, surface texturing, etc.

Want to see how melting on the Moon will take place

The research will be divided into two parts; a practical and experimental part and a theoretically simulated part.
A printing chamber must be built that mimics the pressure on the Moon as much as possible. 

Next, the container will be used to carry out experiments in which the researchers melt moon dust under low pressure using a laser. 
The process will be analysed, both in the form of high-speed imaging and in the form of samples of the material. For example, it will be investigated which minerals are present in the dust before and after the melting, respectively.

Using image analysis, the researchers will look at how molten particles are ejected from the melting, as it can tell us about the unique conditions that apply in a low-pressure environment.

However, not all of the Moon's conditions can be recreated on Earth. Therefore, emphasis will also be placed on a theoretical part, where the project group simulates the conditions that cannot be recreated.

The overall project is planned to run for three and a half years. In addition to Mohamad Bayat himself, the project group will consist of PhD student Emma Porsbjerg, a postdoc and a research assistant.

The European Space Agency is on the sidelines

At the end of the project, the hope is that the research will have shown that there is a connection between the theory developed by the project group and the experiments done at DTU and University College London.

»Another hope is that we really want to build a relatively large structure in our moon chamber. So, we're going to move away from very small components, maybe instead of building two-centimeter parts, we're going to build more than 10 centimeters or 20-centimeter objects. For example, we will manufacture scale components for coating a landing platform or road, to demonstrate how molten moon dust can become solid surfaces that protect astronauts and spacecrafts,« says Mohamad Bayat.

The European Space Agency, ESA, is on the sidelines of the project, as the insights can be of great importance for future space exploration.

»Europe is already ahead in laser melting of moon dust, but perhaps we can be the first research group in Europe to deliver this fundamental research on larger-scale components produced in a low-pressure environment. Then the European Space Agency will be able to provide infrastructure in the form of roads and radiation-protective shields to the international moon base, which will be built under the Artemis collaboration,« concludes Mohamad Bayat.