German Startup 3D Prints First Rigid Beam in Space

German startup Orbital Matter has successfully 3D printed the first rigid beam from a free-flying spacecraft in orbit. The half-meter long beam was built out of a custom plastic material using the Replicator-2 small satellite, which launched on a SpaceX rideshare mission this summer carrying four company 3D printers. Each printer builds a rigid, cylindrical beam by extruding resin coils cured by ultraviolet light, a process compared to cement and water.

Details And Partners

Jakub Stojek, CEO and co-founder of Orbital Matter, stated that Replicator-2 proves arrays can be built directly in space at any required mission size. The company collaborated with the European Space Agency and Thales Alenia on the mission. An anomaly caused one of the four printers to fail while trying to deploy a flexible solar array, but the successfully created boom still managed to deploy the array. Previous space 3D-printing attempts were restricted to the pressurized International Space Station, while NASA previously funded a ground-based vacuum chamber test with Redwire in 2023.

Future Plans

Orbital Matter CTO Robert Ihnatsin noted that the company put multiple printers on the satellite to learn in orbit rather than testing every ground possibility. The current boom length is limited by onboard resin, but engineers believe 100-meter booms are possible. SpaceX Starlink V2 Mini satellites use 20-meter solar arrays for comparison. Co-founded in 2022 by Ihnatsin and Stojek after raising a $3 million seed round, Orbital Matter plans a 2028 demonstration mission with a larger printer on a bigger satellite aiming for 5 kw of power, stepping toward 100+ kW per wing by 2030.

Context

Building large structures in space traditionally relies on folding large solar arrays or telescope mirrors like origami for rocket launch, making in-space manufacturing a vital potential solution for future power and heat-dissipation challenges.