If all goes to plan, scientists may someday begin building outposts on the moon — and some experts believe that these outposts could be constructed with bricks made out of lunar regolith. And now, a new study based on lunar regolith simulant experiments suggests that if these moon-dust bricks crack, bacteria could be used to seal them back up.

Using as many local lunar resources as possible to construct a base on the moon is essential to keep costs down; launching large masses of material from Earth to the moon is very expensive. Thus, making bricks out of lunar regolith has long been mooted as a potential solution. Many teams around the world, including researchers at the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), have been experimenting making these kinds of bricks with lunar regolith simulants.