KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FLORIDA, USA
Why on Earth would NASA want to buy over 100 tonnes of dirt from a quarry in Arizona?
Well, it turns out that this particular dirt is a great substitute for the material you’d find on the surface of the Moon, called lunar regolith. As such, NASA has collected and stored this dirt in its Granular Mechanics and Regolith Operations facility (aka ‘Big Bin’), a climate-controlled chamber for testing equipment bound for the lunar surface.
Inside Big Bin, engineers are testing the Regolith Advanced Surface Systems Operations Robot (RASSOR), which is being developed to collect samples of lunar regolith.
It’s hoped that this regolith could be mixed with a polymer, made from astronauts’ urine, to create ‘polymer composite concrete’. This can be made into a strong, carbon-fibre-like material that could be used in a 3D printer to construct lunar habitats.