{"id":11245,"date":"2019-01-18T15:00:54","date_gmt":"2019-01-18T15:00:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.3dnatives.com\/en\/?p=11245"},"modified":"2022-01-20T15:49:53","modified_gmt":"2022-01-20T15:49:53","slug":"china-3d-printed-base-moon-180120195","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.3dnatives.com\/en\/china-3d-printed-base-moon-180120195\/","title":{"rendered":"China reveals plans to build 3D printed base on moon"},"content":{"rendered":"

Colonising space with additive manufacturing<\/a>? China reveals its plans to be the first country to establish a 3D printed base on the moon.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

China plans to 3D print on the moon<\/h3>\n

It\u2019s the China National Space Administration (CNSA) which announced its plans to use 3D printing technology to build on the moon. Indeed, this announcement was made at a press conference for the State Council Information Office (SCIO) following the Chinese lunar exploration mission, Chang\u2019e 4. As a matter of fact, Chang\u2019e 4 achieved the world\u2019s first soft landing on the far side of the Moon on the 3rd of January. A major step in China\u2019s ambitions to become a space superpower.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

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They further revealed that four more lunar missions are planned, including the launch of Chang\u2019e 5. Consequently, Chang\u2019e 5 will be the first probe to return samples of the moon to Earth since the 1970s. Another three missions are planned after this one. Namely a series of missions that will lay the groundwork for the construction of a lunar research base using additive manufacturing.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>

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More precisely, it’s Chang\u2019e 8 which will specifically focus on scientific surveys and experiments to test important technologies to 3D build a science and research base on the Moon.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Scientists are already asking if it would be possible to build houses on the moon with lunar soil using 3D printing technology. Wu Yanhua, deputy head of the CNSA, said \u201cWe hope that Chang’e 8 will help test some technologies, and do some exploring for the building of a joint lunar base shared by multiple countries<\/em>.\u201d In other words, nothing can be confirmed yet. \u201cWe will make the decision according to the performance of Chang\u2019e-5<\/em>,\u201d he added.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

A race to colonising space using additive manufacturing<\/h3>\n

CNSA is among many other agents that plan to colonise space using 3D printing. As of now they are the first to explicitly reveal their plans to build on the moon very soon if everything goes to plan and preceding missions are successful.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, NASA<\/a> has collaborated with the University of Central Florida (UCF) in the past in order to 3D print structures on Mars. The researchers\u00a0concluded that Martian soil could be processed into a chamber which would be heated to approximately 1648\u00b0C (3000\u00b0F) to produce oxygen and molten metal.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Finally, the research company\u00a0Fotec<\/a>, part of the\u00a0University of Applied Sciences in Austria, has also made steps towards 3D printed structures in space. They 3D printed a miniature igloo and corner of a wall in a composite material containing \u201cMars dust\u201d. The objects were created as part of the\u00a0Technology Research Program at the\u00a0European Space Agency<\/a>\u00a0(ESA).<\/p>\n

What do you think of 3D printing in space?\u00a0Let us know in a comment below or on our\u00a0Facebook<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Twitter<\/a>\u00a0pages! And remember to sign up for our free weekly\u00a0Newsletter<\/a>, to get all the latest news in 3D printing send straight to your inbox!<\/p>\n

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Colonising space with additive manufacturing? China reveals its plans to be the first country to establish a 3D printed base on the moon.\u00a0 China plans to 3D print on the moon It\u2019s the China National Space Administration (CNSA) which announced…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6064,"featured_media":11253,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[120,1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-11245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-aerospace","category-news"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3dnatives.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3dnatives.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3dnatives.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3dnatives.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/6064"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3dnatives.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11245"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.3dnatives.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11245\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11323,"href":"https:\/\/www.3dnatives.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11245\/revisions\/11323"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3dnatives.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11253"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.3dnatives.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3dnatives.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.3dnatives.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}