Can we use sunlight to melt lunar regolith into roads? The ESA thinks so, and they're busy figuring out how to do it.
Astronauts will face a host of obstacles when they visit the Moon again. There’s powerful radiation, wild temperature swings, and challenging gravity to deal with. There’s also dust and lots of it. Moondust was a hazard for the Apollo astronauts, and future lunar astronauts will have to contend with it, too.When Apollo 11 was preparing for the first Moon landing, they faced a lot of unknowns.
NASA modelling shows that when a spacecraft touches down on the lunar surface, it can send tons of fine dust above the surface before eventually settling. Due to the Moon’s low gravity, it can take a long time to settle. That wasn’t a huge problem for Apollo’s small landers, but future landers will be much larger. All that dust could foul the surfaces of landers and cause all kinds of problems.
The idea never took off for various reasons. But on the Moon, in-situ resource exploitation is critical to success. We won’t be manufacturing any asphalt and laying it down. Could laser sand work there? ” The first author is Juan-Carlos Ginés-Palomares, Assistant Researcher at the Technical University in Berlin.
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Scientists want to make moon roads by blasting lunar soil with sunlightCharles Q. Choi is a contributing writer for Space.com and Live Science. He covers all things human origins and astronomy as well as physics, animals and general science topics. Charles has a Master of Arts degree from the University of Missouri-Columbia, School of Journalism and a Bachelor of Arts degree from the University of South Florida.
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