Researchers at Nasa have discovered a new material with extreme heat resistance that could be used in future lunar structures and vehicles.
Nasa is researching ways in which future lunar astronauts could harness resources on the Moon to support life, such as using materials to build infrastructure.
A team at its Glenn Research Centre in Cleveland has studied how various materials interact with melted Moon rocks, which are highly corrosive, quickly wearing through a lot of materials.
They combined simulated lunar dust with a compound called scandium oxide. Following heat treatment using a furnace that can reach around 1,590°C, the mixture had formed into a completely new material – one that did not match any of the more than one million substances in their X-ray analysis database.
To measure the substance’s chemical composition they made small, isolated samples and continued testing how it reacted with the molten lunar dust. They crushed up around eight basic oxide components in ethyl alcohol...