Orbital Matter Printed a Half-Meter Beam in Orbit, With Resin Mass as the Next Limit
SeaPRwire – A half-meter plastic beam now extends from Replicator 2, a German satellite that reached orbit this summer on a SpaceX rideshare. Orbital Matter, the startup behind it, says no free-flying spacecraft had printed a rigid structural element in vacuum before. Four printers flew on the satellite. Each one extrudes resin in coils and cures it with ultraviolet light, building a cylinder a layer at a time, an arrangement the company compares to cement and water. The beam is rigid because the cured wall carries the load, not because a frame holds it. Vacuum changes the working conditions. On the ground, the air around a fresh deposit carries heat away and the surrounding gas helps the material hold its shape while it sets. In orbit there is no air to carry anything: heat leaves by radiation, and a surface in sunlight sits next to a surface in shadow. Orbital Matter builds the wall in passes, curing each layer under the lamp before the next one goes down, so the structure i...