Scientists can find building materials on Mars

Those who space One day’s dream of Mars should shine with the totally realistic reality of the planet’s limited natural resources, especially when it comes to building materials. A team of technology and design scientists from the University of Singapore found that using simple chemistry, organic polymer chitin contained in exoskeletons of insects and crustaceans can be easily transformed into viable building materials for basic equipment and habitat. This will require minimal energy consumption and no need to transport special devices. The scientists described their experiments in a paper recently published in the journal Plus One.

Co-executive Javier Fernandez said the technology was originally developed to create a circular ecosystem in an urban environment. “But because of its efficiency, it is also the most efficient and scalable method of producing material in closed artificial ecosystems in the extremely rare atmosphere of an inanimate planet or satellite.”

As we reported earlier, NASA has announced an ambitious plan to allow American astronauts to return to the moon and establish a permanent base there, with a view to finally placing astronauts on Mars. Materials science will be crucial to the success of the Artemis Moon program, especially when it comes to the materials needed to build a practical lunar (or Martian) base. Concrete, for example, requires a significant amount of added water to be useful in situations, and has a significantly shorter supply of water on both the Moon and Mars. And transportation costs will be restricted. NASA estimates that it costs about 10,000 10,000 to transport just 1 pound of material into orbit.

So much attention has been paid to the possibility of using existing materials on the moon itself to create a lunar base. Past proposals have called for 3D-printing with sorrel cement, which contains significant amounts of chemicals and water (consumables) and a rock-like material that requires both water and phosphoric acid as a liquid binder. And back in March, a paper by an international team of scientists suggested that astronauts who rely on the moon could use urea in their urine as a plasticizer to make building materials such as concrete from lunar clay.

Like the moon, any plan to establish a habitable base on Mars must use manufacturing techniques that use the rules of the Red Planet. But the authors of the current paper point out that most terrestrial production strategies that can fit the bill usually require specialized devices and huge amounts of energy. However, “nature represents a successful strategy of life adapted to harsh environments,” the authors wrote. “In biological organisms, solid compositions are formed by integrating inorganic fillers advancing from the environment at low energy energy costs (e.g., calcium carbonate) and incorporating organic metrics (e.g., chitin) produced at relatively low metabolic values.”

Fernandez and his colleagues say chitin is likely to be part of any planned artificial ecosystem, as it is so in nature. It is the primary component of fish scales and fungal cell walls, for example, as well as the exoskeleton of crustaceans and insects. In fact, insects have already been targeted as a major source of protein for potential martin bases. And since the chitin component of insects has limited nutritional value to humans, there is “no barrier or competition with the food supply” from building it into building materials, the authors wrote. “Lata’s, it’s a by-product.”

For their experiments, the researchers relied on fairly simple chemistry. They took the chitosan from the shrimp and dissolved it in acetic acid – a common product of both aerobic and anaerobic fermentation. While acknowledging that it would not be possible to replace metal devices for specific complex space applications, it was difficult enough to maintain enough torque for small daily tasks.