A space brick from LEGO. There’s a unique story behind its creation.

LEGO is an iconic brand. One of those, alongside Adidas and Google, whose name has become widely used and now defines an entire product category. At the same time, LEGO has been successfully building its incredible popularity, which seems to only grow year by year.

Today, the company has a number of very profitable collaborations in its portfolio, especially in the context of sets made of blocks related to such cultural works as Star Wars, Minecraft and Harry Potter. Additionally, the brand releases films, series, applications, and on the horizon we have more sets awaited by fans, such as the one with Nintendo game heroes.

It’s no wonder then that the company is constantly looking for new ways to attract the interest of loyal fans. And it must be admitted that they succeeded.

Space Brick. There’s only one like it in the world

Over the years, LEGO has experimented with many different materials from which the bricks could be made. At first, of course, it was wood, and then – different types of plastic that were supposed to provide the greatest resistance to adversity. But now the Danish manufacturer has shown the world probably the most interesting (and one of the most expensive) product that the brand has created to date.

Interestingly, its premiere was not accompanied by a large conference, and the aforementioned block is located in the manufacturer’s store in New York, where everyone can see it. The block was created in cooperation with the European Space Agency and is made of meteorite dust. Not all of it – in this case, the 4.5 billion-year-old dust was mixed with a bit of plastic (to form the block) and a material to help it simulate lunar dust. The meteorite dust was collected from an object that was discovered in 2000 in northwestern Africa.

Why was such a block created at all?

As it turns out, its creation has a special purpose. The European Space Agency says it’s a small test to see how well lunar dust might work in building humanity’s first real lunar structures. After all, one of the biggest difficulties in planning structures on the moon is transporting potentially tons of materials from Earth. If it were possible to build structures there using material that’s already there, it could potentially solve one of the pressing problems of colonizing our natural satellite.

How much will LEGO’s Space Brick actually contribute to building a base on the Moon? It is not known. However, 3D printing technology is advancing and there is more and more talk that today it can also be used to build apartments and houses on Earth. One such example are buildings created using methods known from 3D printers, which are supposed to be a response to the growing housing crisis.