China is planning to begin building a moon base by using lunar soil in the next five years.
China is exploring the use of 3D-printing technology to build buildings on moon, as Beijing continues its plans for a long-term lunar settlement.
In the 2020 Chinese lunar mission – the Chang’e 5, named after the mythical Chinese goddess of the moon – an unmanned probe took back to Earth China’s first lunar soil samples.
China plans to send an astronaut to the Moon by 2030, after its 2013 first landing.
Between now and then, China will launch the Chang’e 6, 7 and 8 missions, with the latter tasked to look for reusable resources on the moon for long-term human habitation.
The Chang’e 8 will conduct on-site investigations of the environment and mineral composition, and also determine whether technologies such as 3D printing can be deployed on the lunar surface, China Daily reported on Monday quoting Wu Weiren, a scientist at the China National Space Administration.
“If we wish to stay on the moon for a long time, we need to set up stations by using the moon’s own materials,” Wu said in a recent interview.
“Lunar soil will be our raw material, and it will be printed into construction units,” he added.
Chinese media said earlier this month that China plans to build a lunar base in just five years using the soil of the moon.
A robot tasked with making “lunar soil bricks” will be launched during the Chang’e 8 mission around 2028, according to an expert from the Chinese Academy of Engineering.
In recent years the race to land on the Moon has become more intense, especially with the United States.
This month NASA and Canada’s space agency named four astronauts for the Artemis II mission planned for late 2024, in what would be the first human fly-by of the moon in decades.