Space Brick to construct homes on moon | Fusion - WeRIndia

As the earth is inhabited with millions of organisms including people, researchers are exploring ways to inhabit other planets like Mars and the Moon in the future. The efforts of scientists to explore space for this purpose is in the experimental stage.

In this context, the researchers of the Indian Institute of Science (IISc) and the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) have developed space brick to help the construction of home-like structures on the moon soon.

These space bricks also help people build eco-friendly homes on earth. The team at IISC Mechanical Engineering department was led by Professor Aloke Kumar.

They have used biomineralization, an ancient natural process which has been studied for many years by them.

They call the process as one of the largest ‘manufacturing’ processes which led to the cooling of the planet due to sequestering of molecules like carbon dioxide into carbonates.

Professor Kumar conveyed his ideas to the scientists of ISRO about biomineralization process and its replication for making structures to build homes to live on other planets.

ISRO has developed the sand and patented it. The sand is called the Lunar Soil Simulant (LSS) that can stimulate the soil, dust and rock on the lunar surface.

The characters of LSS matches 99.6 per cent with the samples that were brought from the moon.

The IISC researchers manufactured bricks by inducing bacteria grown in a sample of LLS with the introduction of a bacterium, Sporosarcina pasteurii. They used the biomineralization process for the metabolic activities of calcifying bacteria.

This brick-like structure resembles the sand on the moon, hence, the researchers named it as space brick.

The bacteria used by the researchers are not harmful but beneficial to the earth. It is not infectious and thus, space brick is eco-friendly.

Image Reference: Thebetterindia