China envisions moon base after far-side success

China will seek to establish an international lunar base one day, possibly using 3D printing technology to build facilities, the Chinese space agency said Monday, weeks after landing a rover on the moon's far side.

Image: Future moon base

A vision of a future moon base that could be produced and maintained using 3-D printing.

Building bricks on the moon from lunar dust

In the coming decades, many space agencies hope to conduct crewed missions to the moon and even establish outposts there. In fact, between NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), Roscosmos, and the Indian and Chinese space ...

Five reasons to forget Mars for now and return to the moon

Hopes of colonising Mars rest on the premise that we could terraform the red planet, making it habitable for humans with a breathable atmosphere and clement temperatures. However, a recent study cast doubt on the idea, concluding ...

The future of moon mining

Ever since we began sending crewed missions to the moon, people have been dreaming of the day when we might one day colonize it. Just imagine, a settlement on the lunar surface, where everyone constantly feels only about ...

Video: 3D-printing a lunar base

Could astronauts one day be printing rather than building a base on the Moon? In 2013 ESA, working with industrial partners, proved that 3D printing using lunar material was feasible in principle. Since then, work continues ...

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