It sounds romantic to use lunar dust as a tool for creation, but it's not just an ethereal dream. NASA thinks they may actually be able to utilize the dust to construct a lunar telescopes and light-collecting mirrors, a device actually stationed on the moon. The moon dust would be mixed into a concrete-like paste that could be sculpted to form.
"We believe we have found a way to turn moon dust into a telescope," confirms Peter Chen, an inventor from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center. He's been experimenting with nanotubes, crumbled rocks with a similar form to lunar dust and 'glue-like epoxies'.
"First we had something very gooey and smelly," Chen said, adding, "Then we had this very hard, very stable material like concrete."
Sculpting with Moon Dust
NASA's Lunar Telescope
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Industry Implications
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