When astronauts return to the lunar surface they are probably going to be doing more driving than walking – but to keep billowing moondust at bay they are going to need roads. An European Space Agency (ESA)-led project tested the creation of roadworthy surfaces by melting simulated moondust with a powerful laser.
ESA’s PAVER — Paving the road for large area sintering of regolith – project investigated the feasibility of lunar roadmaking, led by Germany’s BAM Institute of Materials Research and Testing with Aalen University in Germany, LIQUIFER Systems Group in Austria, Germany’s Clausthal University of Technology and the Institute of Materials Physics in Space of the German Aerospace Center, DLR .
The PAVER consortium made use of a 12-kilowatt carbon dioxide laser to melt simulated moondust into a glassy solid surface, as a way of constructing paved surfaces on the face of the Moon.
See the video below and more on the ESA website. Via X.
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- Source: https://blog.adafruit.com/2023/10/23/building-roads-on-the-moon-for-safer-travel-moon-space-esa/
