Whether you’re a fan of NASA or not, you’ll probably be intrigued by the idea of building a house on the moon. In fact, NASA is already planning to take humans back to the moon again in 2024, a time that seems like the perfect opportunity to get a home on the lunar surface. Here’s a few things to keep in mind when building a house on the moon.

NASA plans to return people to the moon in 2024

Until President Trump took office in January 2017, NASA had been aiming to land astronauts on the moon by 2028. Now, the agency plans to send astronauts to the Moon in May 2024.

NASA has a long-standing desire to send humans to Mars. But it hasn’t built a lunar lander since the Apollo programme ended in 1972. Instead, the agency has turned to commercial partners to help make that happen. The company SpaceX won a $2.9 billion contract to develop a Human Landing System.

The company plans to launch the first test flight of an uncrewed spacecraft on Monday. It’s scheduled for 8:33 am. It’s the first step in NASA’s plans to return humans to the Moon.

NASA’s Moon effort is known as the Artemis program. The name refers to Apollo’s twin sister in Greek mythology. The goal of the program is to establish a sustainable presence building house on the moon. It also envisions future astronaut landings at the lunar south pole.

Lunar regolith is a material akin to the dust and crushed rock

Unlike terrestrial soil, the lunar regolith is a layer of unconsolidated rocks that sits over bedrock. It contains a mixture of glass and small particles ground down by meteoroids. It has unusual properties that make it difficult to work with in situ. The material could be used to build future habitats on the moon.

Regolith is made up of over 100 minerals. The predominant constituents are plagioclase feldspar (olivine, pyroxene, and olivine feldspar) and pyroxene. The uppermost layer of lunar regolith contains rock chips, impact glasses, and agglutinates.

The uppermost layer of lunar regolith has an extremely fine particle size distribution. The size of the smallest particles is less than 10 mm. This fineness contributes to the operational hazards of lunar regolith.

The particles are susceptible to electrostatic forces. This contributes to a plasma sheath near the surface. The plasma sheath is caused by the separation of charge on the surface.

Lava tubes passing under the lunar surface are also suitable for this purpose

Currently, lava tubes are only located on the Moon, but researchers are starting to see evidence that they may be elsewhere. Spacecraft have detected several signs of lava tubes, and now one group is working on a system to enter one.

According to researchers, lava tubes could be used to create a lunar base. They could house astronauts and provide safe areas for human exploration on the moon. The lava tubes would act as a shield from harmful IR radiation. These tubes would also protect explorers from cosmic rays and meteorite strikes.

Lava tubes are drained conduits of underground lava rivers. They can be as long as 100 kilometers in length. This is enough to provide an area large enough to house a town on the Moon.

Lava tubes also act as a protective shield against sharp temperature fluctuations. Scientists believe that this may be an important factor in the stability of the tubes.