A Concrete Advantage for Space Explorers

When humans go to the Moon or Mars to stay, they will need to construct safe places in which to live and work.

The most widely used building material on Earth, concrete, may be the answer. It is strong and durable enough to provide protection from cosmic radiation and meteorites and it may be possible to make it using materials available on these celestial bodies.

Concrete is a mixture of sand, gravel and rocks glued together with a paste made of water and cement powder. While that sounds simple, the process is quite complex, and scientists still have questions about the chemistry and microscopic structures involved and how changes in gravity may affect the process.

A recent investigation on the International Space Station examined cement solidification in microgravity to help answer those questions. For the Microgravity Investigation of Cement Solidification (MICS) project, researchers mixed tricalcium silicate (Ca3SiO5 or C3S) and water outside of Earth’s gravity for the first time.