Space Zoo Patrol – In-Space Manufacturing 

By   Tracie Prater, NASA Marshall Space Flight Center 

1. What is the name of the technology? 

In-space manufacturing

2. What does it do?

In-space manufacturing (ISM) in the broadest sense, is a set of technologies that allow us to manufacture parts and structures off-earth.  In-space manufacturing is adapting existing manufacturing processes (like cutting, welding, recycling, or even 3D printing) to operate in the space environment. That could entail operation of manufacturing systems inside a habitat with crew, on a planetary surface, or on-orbit in the vacuum of space.

Imagine you’re on a space mission on the way to Mars.  You’re hundreds of thousands of miles from earth.  What if a system breaks (let’s say it’s the system that provides you with oxygen for your habitat – yikes!) and you don’t have the particular spare part you need?   In-space manufacturing capabilities could allow you to make the part on demand, quickly, without relying on another ship from earth to bring it to you or needing to carry the spare with you (carrying a large amount of spare parts adds significant mass to your spacecraft). 

In-space manufacturing is focused on enabling crew to make whatever they need, when they need it.  We refer to that as “point of use” manufacturing.  It’s similar to having a machine shop in your garage at home.  It can save you a trip to the hardware store (remember there’s no hardware store in space!) and also offers you the flexibility to make custom parts and structures as the need arises. We need crew on long missions in habitats that travel far from earth to have more self-sufficiency.  If you’re on the surface of Mars and need resupply, it could take 6-9 months for support to arrive with current technologies, depending on the position of the planets in relation to one another.  

3. How does it work?

How in-space manufacturing works depends on the manufacturing process you are using to make your parts.  I’ll use 3D printing as an example.  There are a lot of 3D printing processes, but the one most people are familiar with is fused filament fabrication (FFF).  In some ways, this process is similar to a hot glue gun – plastic wire is heated, pushed through a nozzle, and deposited on a plate (called the “build plate”).  The 3D printer uses a part file that is sliced into layers in a computer software – the thickness of the layers and the geometry of the part in each layer provide data/code that tell the extruder (which is depositing the material) and/or the build plate how to move.  After a layer is deposited, the build plate translates down, like an elevator.  3D printing enables a lot more freedom in design.  It also reduces material use (you’re depositing material only where it’s needed) and material waste (since you’re not removing material).  And the feedstock (the material you are printing with) could also be generated from local resources you may have on hand.  Imagine recycling plastic waste in your habitat on a space mission and turning it into material that feeds your 3D printer.  Or using the “soil” that’s on a planetary surface to print large structures.   

4. How is it better than the older technology?

In-space manufacturing is not a new idea, but something that’s been envisioned and experimented with since the 1960s.  There have been a number of experiments conducted on a variety of spacecraft to understand producing or joining materials in the space environment.  These include Soyuz 6 (a Russian mission in the ‘60s), Skylab (first US space station), Spacelab (laboratory space in the space shuttle’s cargo bay), Mir (Russian space station), and now the International Space Station.  These experiments have studied how materials processing and manufacturing would work in the space environment.  You’re removing gravity and in some cases you might be operating in a vacuum, which is different than how we might operate these processes on earth. You also likely have much lower power levels than are available on earth for operating some processes.  Part of in-space manufacturing is learning to scale and adapt processes for this unique environment and understand how materials and parts produced using them in space might be different from materials made on earth.   

In the past 20 years, 3D printing in particular has been a technology that has changed how we think about manufacturing in space.  It’s a technology that is intended to provide rapid prototyping (making things quickly), custom manufacturing (making specialty parts), and point of use manufacturing (make what you need, exactly when you need it).  As such, it’s something that is highly attractive for use on future space missions.  Someday it might enable crew to pack lighter for space missions. It also might allow us to build really large structures that wouldn’t fit on the top of a rocket.  We always think that going to space is weightlifting (you have to get everything out of the earth’s gravity and that takes a lot of rocket fuel!).  Packing lighter in terms of spares means you have more room in your “space house.” 

To date, NASA and commercial partners have operated both plastic 3D printing and recycling systems to the space station.  NASA is working to expand these capabilities to include metal manufacturing (even metal 3D printing!) and continue to prove out manufacturing technologies for use on future missions like Mars where we’ll really need them.  3D printing at large scale is actually already used to make some buildings on earth. Building structures like habitats on another planetary surface might seem like science fiction, but currently, NASA is exploring manufacturing technologies to enable that process.  NASA has plans to test manufacturing processes that would use lunar regolith (which you can think of as “moon soil”) on the lunar surface. There was an experiment on the space station previously that explored printing with regolith at a small scale in a crewed environment.

5. What classes should I take in school to work on this?

The space industry is for everyone – we have engineers and scientists, but also writers, graphic artists, lawyers, medical doctors, and a whole host of other career opportunities.  Whatever your interests might be, there’s a place for you in the space community.  To work on in-space manufacturing specifically, courses in materials, manufacturing, mechanical engineering, civil engineering, physics, mathematics, and software engineering are all strongly relevant. Writing skills are also important in any STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) field so you can document your work and effectively communicate results and what they mean.  With any manufacturing technology, there are also a lot of opportunities for technicians – these are the people who operate equipment, often in a production environment, and enable us to make things.  They’re the closest to the hardware.  Any space mission you see that is launching had a lot of technician support that went into it.    

6. Pictures