European Space Agency creates space Legos from meteorite dust

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In Paris, the European Space Agency has 3D-printed Lego-shaped bricks from meteorite dust to evaluate the material’s potential for a lunar base construction material.   

The dust for the “Space Lego” was sourced from a 4.5 billion-year-old meteorite discovered in Africa over 20 years ago. ESA said the meteorite material is a stand-in for lunar regolith—a loose material covering the surface of moon. Only small samples of lunar regolith were available from Apollo missions.

“Our teams are working towards the future of space travel and take inspiration from not just what’s above us, but also what we can find on Earth,” ESA science officer Aidan Cowley tells dezeen. “No one has ever built a structure on the moon, so we have to work out not only how we build them but what we build them out of as we can’t take any materials with us.”

At the conclusion of the project, ESA gave 15 of the bricks to the Lego Group to display in its stores and hopefully inspire the next generation of astronauts.