Andrew Paul, writing for Popular Science, covers a University of Arkansas project that makes interlocking bricks out of moon dust alone. Cole McCallum, then an undergraduate, worked with mechanical engineer Wan Shou on the research, published in the journal NPJ Advanced Manufacturing.

Lunar regolith doesn’t contain organic matter. It’s loose, sharp-edged particles from billions of years of impacts, so it won’t stick to itself, and most proposals for building with it call for a binder shipped from Earth. McCallum used laser powder bed fusion instead. A powerful laser fuses the powder together one layer at a time, the bed drops, and the process repeats until there’s a solid block. As McCallum put it, “the regolith powder is binding to itself.”

The team used LHS-1, a commercial simulant that stands in for Apollo-era moon dust, and printed cross-shaped and H-shaped pieces a few centimeters wide that connect like LEGO bricks.…