East China lab unveils moon brick maker for lunar facility construction

HEFEI, Sept. 21 (Xinhua) -- At the ongoing 2025 World Manufacturing Convention in Hefei in east China's Anhui Province, a Chinese space-tech lab has unveiled a lunar brick maker that turns moon dust into bricks.

As the world's first proof-of-concept machine of this kind, it is designed to focus sunlight to generate temperatures above 1,300 degrees Celsius, thus melting lunar soil to create shaped bricks.

Bricks produced on site can be used to build roads and structures on the moon -- thereby laying the groundwork for developing future lunar research stations and propelling China's deep-space exploration goals.

This device uses a parabolic reflector to concentrate solar energy, which is then transmitted through a fiber optic bundle. At the end of this bundle, the solar concentration ratio can exceed 3,000 times normal intensity, according to the Deep Space Exploration Laboratory (DSEL) based in Hefei, capital of Anhui.

To ensure this machine is capable of adapting to various types of lunar soil, DSEL researchers developed multiple simulated lunar soil samples and conducted extensive testing on the machine before finalizing its design.

China initiated the International Lunar Research Station -- a scientific experimental facility that will consist of sections both on the lunar surface and in lunar orbit. It is projected to be constructed in two phases, namely a basic model to be built by 2035 in the lunar south pole region, and an extended model to be built in the 2040s.

Other technologies unveiled at the four-day event in Anhui include an ultra-lightweight reusable heat shield for rockets, a computational-lithography platform for chipmaking, a non-invasive brain-computer-interface acquisition system, and a universal technology foundation for intelligent robots.