Key Sentence:
- Designed to build NASA landing pads, roads, and even homes, it can help people become interplanetary.
When a spacecraft docked at the International Space Station (ISS) this week. It carried an all-important Earth cargo – a 3D printer NASA that uses moon dust to create solid materials.
The Cygnus spacecraft, developed by US aerospace company Northrop Grumman, NASA provides a pressure system that will revolutionize future lunar missions. Make it possible to manufacture equipment on celestial bodies instead of constantly flying high and very expensive cargo.
Research into using lunar dust – or regolith as it is scientifically known as a building material for 3D printing has been ongoing for years. And scientists are now on their way to testing gravityless manufacturing capabilities aboard the ISS.
Because original samples were so valuable and rare, the printer used artificial lunar stimulants. Compounds so similar in composition to lunar regolith that they needed to be tested. Redwire, the company behind the printer, said the device could be used to make small bodies. And gear but added that it could potentially be expanded to print more significant parts. Such as landing pads, roads, or even habitats on the lunar surface.
NASA isn’t hiding its ambition for the technology, suggesting that it could even be used to streamline the process of turning humans into interplanetary forms. The space agency announced that it would take a closer look at possible 3D printing settlements on Mars.
If you can see yourself on the verge of space travel, sign up for this program. That invites you to spend a year on a Mars simulator.