The Cygnus NG-16 flight recently delivered materials and additional equipment for 3D printing with lunar regolith experiments conducted on the ISS.
NASA seems to be thinking about the future of the Lunar and Martian colonizations. The idea of building habitats and functional facilities during the missions with the help of the materials available on the planet/satellite is not new but it requires thinking about exact production technologies. Building a constructional plant on the Moon or Mars would be a problem. But using a constructional 3D printer would be perfect for solving the issues and building habitats.
The hardware side of things is also under research but our article will cover the materials. The experiments mentioned above include working with Lunar regolith, as well as trying to use a polymer-regolith mix for making sometimething functional with the help of 3D printing technologies.
3D printers have been working on the ISS since 2014 with the American manufacturer Made in Space being the main supplier. Their first system is already out of date and is replaced with the second generation of this FDM device. There are also recycling solutions that turn waste into useful filaments. Resin 3D printers are also used: in 2020, an SLA system for producing turbine blisks made from ceramic matrix composites. Another example would be a bioprinter made by a collaboration of nScrypt (equipment manufacturer) and Techshot (focused on experimenting with bioprinting using cardiac tissue and testing possibilities of producing fully functional internal organs).
There’s also a device by 3D Bioprinting Solutions that is made using the magnetic traps technology which was a part of several bioprinting experiments.
By the way, Intamsys together with NASA also launched several projects made with PEEK some time ago. More information can be found here.
Made in Space developed a 3D printer for a constructional experiment covering the possibility of building habitats on the Moon and Mars. The Additive Manufacturing Facility (AMF) device is the second generation FDM solution mentioned earlier in the article. It will print with a Lunar regolith simulant. Apart from the materials, new extruders and print beds were sent to the ISS. The printheads are designed as single modules already loaded with filaments. That was done to make it easier for the astronauts to 3D print in low gravity.
Redwire Space is a corporation in charge of the project. It consists of seven private businesses that are related to the aerospace industry. Made in Space is among them.
Obviously, there are no plans to 3D print buildings on the ISS. The prints will be small and will be tested after getting back on Earth: including for compression and tensile strength, as well as modulus of rupture. The main goal is to prove that regolith 3D printing is possible in low gravity conditions. In case of the success, 3 test samples will be printed. They must meet the ASTM D695-15, ASTM D638-14 and ASTM D790-17 standards. The scientists are interested in how the material will act in the low gravity conditions, like those on the Moon and Mars. After the experiments are finished, equipment will stay on the station in case further ones will be needed.
