Scientists can already grow plants in lunar regolith, but now, researchers are exploring methods to turn soil on Mars and the Moon into geopolymer cement. To achieve this, the process will require a binder to glue the extraterrestrial starting materials together through chemistry. The material must also be durable enough for the vertical launch pads needed to protect man-made rockets from swirling rocks, dust and other debris during liftoff or landing.
Starting off, the researchers combined various simulated soils with sodium silicate then cast the geopolymer mixture into ice-cube-like molds and waited for the reaction to occur. After a week, they used these cubes to simulate space conditions, including under a vacuum, where some of the material samples did form cement, while others were only partially successful. What they discovered was that at high temperatures, around 600° Celsius, every moon-like sample got stronger.
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When a rocket takes off there’s a lot of weight pushing down on the landing pad and the concrete needs to hold, so the material’s compressive strength becomes an important metric. At least on Earth, we were able to make materials in little cubes that had the compressive strength necessary to do the job,” said Norman Wagner, Unidel Robert L. Pigford Chair of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the University of Delaware.
