Scientists found a no-frills way to build on Mars

A group of engineers found a way to build on Mars using nothing but the Red Planet's soil, a discovery they said could be used to eventually build structures on the Red Planet.

The University of California San Diego team discovered Martian soil can be made into bricks stronger than steel-reinforced concrete by simply using the right amount of pressure. That means no oven to bake the bricks or any other additional ingredients.

"The people who will go to Mars will be incredibly brave," lead author Yu Qiao pronounced. "They will be pioneers. And I would be honored to be their brick maker."

The researchers stumbled onto the discovery, which was published in Thursday's Scientific Reports. Originally, the team sought to reduce the number of polymers needed to create bricks. Instead, they found pressure equal to a 10-pound hammer falling one meter was enough to form a small sample of hardened Mars soil.

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Researchers said the soil's iron oxide, which gives the planet its reddish color, acts as a binding agent. In theory, building on Mars could work this way: A person could use pressure to create small soil pallets, which could then be cut into the shape of bricks and stacked. The researchers now aim to make bigger bricks.

The researchers concede it's not the first effort to use Mars' soil to make bricks, but it is the first method to do it with few resources. Other research included a nuclear-powered kiln and transforming Mars compounds into polymers.

It's an important find as Mars exploration remains a White House priority. NASA said it hopes to send a human to Mars sometime in the 2030s. But President Trump has said he'd like a manned mission to Mars by the end of his first term, or "at worst," during a prospective second term.

Mars is located 142 million miles away from the sun. NASA's Viking 1 and 2 spacecraft were the first to land there in 1976, when they snapped pictures of the planet's surface. In 2004, NASA rovers discovered water once flowed on Mars, an indication the planet could have harbored life.

SpaceX founder and CEO Elon Musk wants to put people on Mars in the next decade. The United Arab Emirates aims to build a settlement on Mars by 2117.

Follow Sean Rossman on Twitter: @SeanRossman