The soil on Mars could be melted down, spun into fibres as strong as steel and used to make durable building materials for a potential Martian base.
Instead of sending vast amounts of resources to the Red Planet to build a colony there, which would be exceptionally costly, researchers are exploring the idea of constructing materials using what would be available on site.
鈥淲e wanted to see if we could use Mars soil to develop fibre materials,鈥� says at the Xinjiang Technical Institute of Physics and Chemistry in China. 鈥淔ibre has lots of functionality, for clothing or fibre-based material.鈥�
Advertisement
To do that, Ma and his colleagues recreated Martian basaltic soil, which is largely made up of silica with traces of aluminium oxide, iron oxides, magnesium oxides and calcium oxide.
They heated the proxy soil to 1500掳C and then submerged it in water to cool it down. Next, they crushed the material and fed it into a spinning machine to form fibres.
The diameters of the fibres ranged from 9.7 to 13.9 micrometres, and they had a maximum tensile strength of 1320 megapascals, which means they could withstand a similar amount of stress as a small steel bar.
鈥淚t鈥檚 quite similar to typical glass fibre used in the reinforcement of concrete,鈥� says Ma.
As well as being useful for building, the fibre could be used as a medium to grow plants in, since it holds water better than the dry Martian soil, he says. Or it could be used to make clothes, like T-shirts for astronauts, on Mars.
鈥淚f [production of] these fibres 鈥� currently being just a proof of concept 鈥� can be scaled to relevant levels, they present an interesting concept for reinforcing other materials,鈥� says 聽at the Singapore University of Technology and Design.
The fibre-forming process may be affected by conditions on the Red Planet, though, such as the lower gravity, says Ma, who hopes to refine the process to better suit the Martian environment.
arXiv
