Harbin Institute of Technology has developed a “solar furnace” that may be able to “burn bricks and build houses” on the Moon

The extraterrestrial environment physics and intelligent exploration team of the national key scientific and technological infrastructure “Space Environment Ground Simulation Device” of Harbin Institute of Technology has developed a new type of solar concentrator. In the future, it may be possible to create “lunar bricks” by melting lunar soil to help build homes on the Moon using local materials.

It is a reflection compensation system made up of three special mirrors. It can accurately focus sunlight like a “magnifying glass” and can reach a focus temperature of up to 892 degrees Celsius in outdoor measurements. The relevant results were published online in the academic journal “Engineering” on the 30th.

“It’s like a ‘solar furnace’, providing a new high-temperature heat source solution for future lunar base construction and in-situ resource utilization such as lunar soil melting,” said Li Lifang, a professor at the Harbin Institute of Technology and leader of the extraterrestrial environment physics and intelligent detection team of the National Science Facility. “For example, heating and melting lunar soil could be used not only to ‘burn bricks’ to build houses, but also to fabricate mechanical components.”

According to reports, although traditional concentrator equipment can generate high temperature, if the angle deviates slightly, the concentrator efficiency will drop significantly. This system is like wearing a pair of “corrective glasses” on the condenser, which reduce aberrations when focusing light and focus the light into a smaller area.

Experiments show that in a 5 °C temperature environment, this 300 mm diameter device can increase solar radiation by more than 500 times, with the focus temperature stable above 800 °C, with a maximum value of 892 °C. According to theoretical calculations based on the absence of atmosphere and intense radiation conditions on the moon’s surface, scientific researchers estimate that its core temperature is expected to reach 1326 degrees Celsius, which is expected to meet the energy needs of high-temperature processes such as melting lunar soil and making bricks.

Li Lifang introduced that using sunlight to heat and melt lunar soil to create building materials and create a “source of local materials” is a way to build houses on the Moon. Compared with traditional instruments, this new technology nearly doubles the tolerance range of obtaining angle deviation and can actively adapt to the extreme lunar environment, thereby reducing the difficulty of instrument manufacturing and transportation costs. The team will also conduct lightweight prototype development and lunar soil melting tests to promote the early implementation of this technology on the Moon.