In Orbit
COMMENTARYBy Frank Morring, Jr.Senior Editor Frank
Morring, Jr., blogs at:
AviationWeek.com/onspace
[email protected]After the astronauts have installed a
special 3-D printer in the glovebox, and
set up the high-definition video cameras
that will watch its extruder and work
platform from two diferent angles,
controllers at a small startup company
in the research park at Mofett Field,
California, will send signals to begin
making things in orbit.
The first test articles will be simple
plastic coupons preloaded into the
system’s memory. Those will give engi-
neers at Made In Space, the company
that built the microwave-size printer,
and at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight
Center in Huntsville, Alabama, data on
how well the system performs in the
full-time microgravity environment
uniquely available on the space station.
SpaceX delivered the gear on its latest
resupply mission to the station, and
will return the samples via an ocean
splashdown on the next Dragon capsule
to make the trip, probably early next
year. After those are examined on the
ground, the In-Space Manufacturing
Project will get to work on the real job:
making things the station crew can use.
“We’re developing a catalog of all
the diferent ways that we can print
things that will be helpful, whetherF
irst they have to get rid of
the mice. Right now the Mi-
crogravity Science Glovebox on
the International Space Station
is occupied by a rodent experi-
ment. When the ISS crew fin-
ishes with it in mid-November,
the way will be clear for the first
space-based manufacturing in
history, a trail-blazing experiment that may someday help human
explorers make their way to Mars.Preparing for
The Long Haul
Additive manufacturing in space
is set to begin on the ISS next month
it be payload parts or ancillary hard-
ware, cubesat components,” says Niki
Werkheiser, the NASA project manager.
“It will continue to grow. There’s a
clip on exercise equipment that often
breaks. There’s an Eclss [environmental
control and life support system] filter
extraction cap. There’s ancillary hard-
ware that supports the rodent research,
sample containers.”
The on-board manufacturing is a
classic example of how NASA is using
the space station to test the hardware
it must develop for deep-space human
exploration. In a sense, the station is
the perfect analog for a Mars mission.
It has continuous microgravity, which
mimics the gravity loads crews and
their equipment will experience en
route to and from the red planet, and
its mass and pressurized volume match
what a crew is likely to need to survive
the trip.
Even though it has pressurized
volume equivalent to a Boeing 747’s,
that isn’t enough room for all the parts
that are likely to fail during a three-year
voyage. It doesn’t even have room for
the feedstock that would be needed to
keep an additive-manufacturing unit
running that long. So Werkheiser’steam already is planning a follow-on
test unit that will recycle the parts and
tools it makes once they break or are no
longer needed. Among early questions
to be answered is how often feedstock
can be reused in space before the
material itself wears out. And the only
place to find an answer with the kind of
certainty that is needed for deep space
exploration is on the space station.
“We can build big vacuum chambers
and use pumps to take the atmosphere
out of those chambers, so we can simu-
late the lack of atmosphere in space,”
says Jefrey Sheehy, senior technologist
in NASA’s Space Technology Mission
Directorate, which is funding the $5
million additive-manufacturing work.
“We can heat things up; we can cool
things down, but what we can’t do for
more than 30 sec. on an airplane flight
that goes over a big steep parabola and
puts you in free fall briefly is recreate
the microgravity environment.”
Made In Space engineers flew their
printer through 400 parabolas on
NASA’s “Vomit Comet” (see photo), but
that doesn’t come close to the checkout
it will get on the ISS. At a Technology
Exposition organized by the Marshall
center, engineers and scientists who
are using the space station to wring out
the hardware that will be needed to go
to deep space cited case after case of
problems that only cropped up after
their hardware was in space and run-
ning for a while.
Robyn Gatens, the systems and
technology demonstration manager in
the ISS Division at agency headquar-
ters, listed two potential show-stoppers
that turned up in the Eclss systems.
The bone calcium astronauts lose along
with the gravity loads bones normally
work against goes into their urine and
then gums up the complex recycling
gear NASA is testing on the station to
help close the water-supply loop. And
the absorbent beads in the carbon-
dioxide removal beds produce more
dust in space than they did in ground
tests, which clogs air filters and other
life-support gear.
“It’s priceless,” says Werkheiser,
when asked what the ISS’s “legacy” will
be. “There’s no other way we can test,
in a microgravity environment... how
to live, work, operate on a daily basis.
That’s what station is about.” c24 AVIATION WEEK & SPACE TECHNOLOGY/NOVEMBER 3/10, 2014 AviationWeek.com/awstMADE IN SPACE圀漀爀氀搀䴀愀最猀⸀渀攀琀圀漀爀氀搀䴀愀最猀⸀渀攀琀
圀漀爀氀搀䴀愀最猀⸀渀攀琀