NASA Working to Bring 3D Printing to the Space Station

By equipping the International Space Station with a 3D printer, NASA hopes to cut down on the number of supplies ferried to and from the orbiting lab.

In doing so the space agency has teamed up with Made in Space, a technology startup based in California.

"Imagine an astronaut needing to make a life-or-death repair on the International Space Station," Aaron Kemmer, the company's chief executive, told reporters. "Rather than hoping that the necessary parts and tools are on the station already, what if the parts could be 3D printed when they needed them?"

Researchers will get the chance to test this theory next year when a printer is boarded up on a SpaceX Dragon capsule headed toward space station.

The mission will serve as a proof-of-concept experiment, Made in Space co-founder Mike Chen explained while speaking at World Maker Faire, The Christian Science Monitor reports. Should it prove a success, researchers will launch a permanent version of the printer in 2015.

"The paradigm shift that we want everyone to understand is: instead of launching things to space, just print it there," Chen said. "Why would you go through all the energy to build it here and launch it, when you can just build it there?"

Besides printing food and tools, a 3D printer could perhaps one day print small satellites that could then be launched from the space station and used to transmit data back to Earth, scientists say.

"If you want to be adaptable, you have to be able to design and manufacture on the fly, and that's where 3D printing in space comes in,'' Dave Korsmeyer, director of engineering at Nasa's Ames Research Center, told The Associated Press.

For this reason, NASA officials are looking to 3D printing not only for the space station, but as a means of reducing the cost of space travel through the production of printed hardware.

In August, a rocket engine roared to life with the help of a printed injector, generating 20,000 pounds of thrust.

"Any time we realize we can 3-D print something in space, it's like Christmas," said inventor Andrew Filo, who is consulting with NASA on the project. "You can get rid of concepts like rationing, scarce or irreplaceable."