An astronaut's guide to out-of-Earth manufacturing

mprovising new stuff from the stuff you have is part of an astronaut's job description—think Apollo 13's crew refitting CO2 filters to save their own lives, or stranded Mark Watney in The Martian, feeding himself on the ...

Image: 3-D-printed satellite imager design

Weirdly organic in appearance, this prototype is the first outcome of an ESA project to develop, manufacture and demonstrate an optical instrument for space with 3D printing.

Want to build a moon base? Easy—just print it

Planetary Resources, a company hoping to make asteroid mining into a trillion dollar industry, earlier this year unveiled the world's first 3D printed object made from bits of an asteroid.

Image: X-ray tomography machine

The engineers of ESA's Materials and Electrical Components Laboratory – tasked with studying candidate parts for space missions – have an armoury of specialist equipment to turn to, including one very heavy piece of kit.

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