Global Courant 2023-04-25 16:02:41
China wants to start building a lunar base with soil from the moon in five years.
China will explore the use of 3D printing technology to build buildings on the moon as Beijing solidifies plans for long-term habitation on the moon.
During China’s 2020 lunar mission — the Chang’e 5, named after the mythical Chinese goddess of the moon — an unmanned probe took China’s first lunar soil samples back to Earth.
China, which made its first moon landing in 2013, plans to land an astronaut on the moon by 2030.
Between now and then, China will launch the Chang’e 6, 7 and 8 missions, the latter tasked with searching the moon for reusable resources for long-term human habitation.
The Chang’e 8 will conduct on-site research on the environment and mineral composition, as well as determine whether technologies such as 3D printing can be deployed on the lunar surface, China Daily reported Monday citing Wu Weiren, a scientist at the China National Space Administration.
“If we want to stay on the moon for a long time, we have to set up stations using the moon’s own materials,” Wu said in a recent interview.
“Moon Earth will be our raw material and it will be pressed into building units,” he added.
China wants to start building a lunar base with soil from the moon in five years, Chinese media reported earlier this month.
According to an expert from the Chinese Academy of Engineering, the Chang’e 8 mission will launch a robot tasked with making “lunar foundation stones” around 2028.
The race to set foot on the moon has intensified in recent years, especially with the United States.
This month, NASA and Canada’s space agency named four astronauts for the Artemis II mission scheduled for late 2024, in what would be the first human flyby of the moon in decades.
