Historic! India's ISRO and IISc create the first ever brick for Mars; Get ready to build houses on the Red Planet

The dream of creating a human settlement on Mars has been a decades old dream of mankind. We have sent rovers, scouted the planet for water and examined the soil. And while we have learnt a lot about the red planet over the years, there were not enough developments on the ‘living on Mars’ department. But today the Indian Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) in collaboration with Indian Institute of Science (IISc) has taken a big step towards that dream by creating a brick. And not just any brick – it is a ‘Martian brick’.

The Martian brick developed by ISRO and IISC is a special kind of brick which can be used to make houses in the extreme atmospheric conditions of Mars. The Indian space agency has found out a sustainable way of creating the bricks using soil from Mars, bacteria and urea. According to a statement by the IISc, the method for making these space bricks have been mentioned in a study published in PLOS One journal. Do note that ISRO has not taken the soil from Mars but have created soil similar to Mars soil by adding chemicals and material properties on terrestrial soil. It is called Mars Simulated Soil (MSS).

“A slurry is first created by mixing Martian soil with guar gum, a bacterium called Sporosarcina pasteurii, urea and nickel chloride (NiCl2). This slurry can be poured into moulds of any desired shape, and over a few days the bacteria convert the urea into crystals of calcium carbonate. These crystals, along with biopolymers secreted by the microbes, act as cement holding the soil particles together,” the IISc post stated.

ISRO and IISc make Martian Bricks

The reason Martian bricks were created and normal Earth bricks were not considered for making houses on Mars is because the planet’s high iron concentration in the soil and low gravity make it unsuitable for normal bricks to be sustainable in maintaining structural integrity. That is why soil from the red planet was chosen by ISRO for this project.

There are other advantages too. According to researchers, this method of creating bricks also reduces the porosity of the brick which ensures that it is strong enough to hold large structures together. The group had also tried to make similar bricks using soil from the Moon as well.

For the next steps, ISRO will conduct various tests on the bricks to see how it adapts to Mars-like conditions. The space agency also plans to send the bricks to outer space to observe it under low gravity.