China has taken a concrete step toward realizing its ambition of building a permanent outpost on the moon by successfully exposing a batch of experimental "lunar bricks" to the harsh conditions in space for about a year and bringing them back almost intact.
The 34 sample bricks, weighing about 100 grams in total and made from materials that mimic lunar soil composition, were returned to Earth recently aboard the Shenzhou XXI spacecraft. Their survival outside the Tiangong space station for such a long duration marks a critical milestone in engineering and advances China's plan to
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