'Moon bricks' to be sent to space station

Use of simulated soil could aid future plans to set up lunar research outposts

Chinese scientists have made some bricks using simulated lunar soil and plan to send them to the nation's Tiangong space station for experiments, according to China Central Television.

The State broadcaster quoted Professor Zhou Cheng from Huazhong University of Science and Technology, where the bricks were made, as saying on Saturday that the interlocking blocks were made inside a vacuum hot-pressing furnace that heated the materials, which simulated the composition of real lunar soil, up to about 1,000 C to be sintered.

Each brick is more than three times stronger than a standard red brick or concrete brick, which means each square centimeter is able to support more than 1 metric ton of weight, he said.