“Our results show that you can take a material that is inherently challenging and convert it into something structurally beneficial,” said Dr. Denizhan Yavas. [ https://www.labroots.com/trending/space/30488/using-moon-reg…habitats-2](https://www.labroots.com/trending/space/30488/using-moon-reg…habitats-2)
How can lunar dust (officially called regolith) be used to build future habitats on the Moon? This is what a recent study published in Advanced Engineering Materials hopes to address as a pair of researchers investigated how a novel technique for how lunar regolith could strengthen advanced composite materials. This study has the potential to help reduce the cost of shipping building materials to the Moon for future habitats by using available resources.
For the study, the researchers used lunar regolith simulant, a common substitute for lunar regolith since the latter is in low supply, to examine whether it could be used as a reinforcer for a common aerospace building material called polymer composites. The motivation for this study came from previous lunar regolith research that explored repelling lunar dust using nanoscale polymer surfaces. This is because lunar dust is highly abrasive, as the Apollo astronauts found out, and repelling it could prove beneficial for future astronauts.
Now, the researchers aspired to exploit this abrasiveness to their benefit for developing next generation building material on the Moon. In the end, the researchers found the lunar regolith simulant strengthened both the impact resistance and toughness of the polymers between 30 to 40 percent. Both attributes will be crucial to maintaining lunar habitats due to the Moon’s much harsher environment than Earth, specifically regarding micrometeorite strikes and solar radiation.
