The European Space Agency made Lego bricks out of moon dust
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Fans of space travel can already build Lego models of the Apollo lunar lander, the Saturn V rocket that took it to the moon, and NASA’s new Space Launch System that will carry astronauts around the moon as early as next year.
Now scientists at the European Space Agency have done a bit of reverse engineering, using simulated lunar regolith to craft Lego-like bricks that could be used to construct future moon bases. The space bricks are even on display at Lego stores around the world, including the one in West Edmonton Mall.
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“No one has ever built a structure on the Moon, so we have to work out not only how we build them but what we build them out of, as we can’t take any materials with us,” said ESA Science Officer Aidan Cowley.
“My team and I love creative construction and had the idea to explore whether space dust could be formed into a brick similar to a LEGO brick, so we could test different building techniques. The result is amazing, and while the bricks may look a little rougher than usual, importantly the clutch power still works, enabling us to play and test our designs.”
Since actual lunar material is hard to come by — NASA’s Apollo missions brought back less than 400 kilograms of the stuff, and the recent robotic mission by China to the moon’s far side netted just two kilograms — the ESA researchers used dust from a meteorite that was found in Africa in 2000. They then added polylactide (a biodegradable polymer) and lunar regolith simulant (fake moon soil, chemically similar to the real thing), and ran that through 3D printers.
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The results look like proper Lego bricks, with studs at the top that click into the tubes on the bottom. Scientists hope the design, combining whimsy and functionality, will inspire young engineers-to-be.
Lego has a long history of creating space-themed sets and in some cases sending them into actual space. In 2011, Lego sent several kits to the International Space Station for the astronauts to build. Three years later, Danish astronaut Andreas Mogensen brought 20 minifigures, each in its own spacesuit and bearing Mogensen’s mission patch.
Further afield, last year’s uncrewed Artemis I flight around the moon carried four Lego figures in lieu of actual astronauts. NASA’s Spirit and Opportunity rovers on Mars have images of Lego figures attached to them with magnetic Lego bricks. And the 2011 Juno mission to Jupiter carried minifigures in the form of the gods Jupiter and Juno as well as Galileo Galilei, each made from space-grade aluminum to better survive in the vacuum of space.
The ESA Space Bricks are on display from June 24 to Sept. 20 at the Lego store in West Edmonton Mall and in additional stores in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Denmark, Spain and Australia.
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