Maintenance Mindset: Is manufacturing in space the key to affordable space travel and lunar exploration?
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While manufacturing is cast as dark and grimy, it’s in those factories where the shiny new spacecraft carrying our astronaut heroes are erected, and aerospace manufacturers are fundamental to U.S. space flight. Maybe manufacturing could attract more workers if the new work location was in orbit? Workforce aside, NASA thinks in-space manufacturing will help get us back to the Moon and beyond.
NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center and students from the College of Engineering at The Ohio State University in Columbus are studying high-powered fiber laser beam welding in simulated reduced gravity. Space travel is expensive, where distances are colossal and resources are naught, and in-space manufacturing might be one way to make it more affordable.
Did you know it takes three days to get to the Moon about 238,855 miles away? And NASA says it will take three months to journey to Mars (140 million miles away). That will be pricey, considering the spacecraft will need to carry all the fuel needed for the entire trip, and the cost of fuel is small in comparison to the cost of developing and building a one-time use rocket. The enormous cost of space travel is largely cited as the reason we stopped putting people in space. NASA no longer has the deep pockets of the 1960s and 70s, so it needs to get creative.
In-space manufacturing could drastically reduce the cost of repairs and change the nature of spacecraft construction. Under current methods, the parts needed for repair would need to be assembled on Earth and flown up to orbit. That’s a high delivery charge.
The physical structure of space vehicles uses fasteners, rivets, or other mechanical means to allow assembly in space. What if technicians could weld a brand-new part in orbit instead? That’s exactly what NASA and university students and scientists are researching.
At the beginning of the fall semester, a team from Ohio State’s Welding Engineering and Multidisciplinary Capstone Programs and Marshall’s Materials & Processes Laboratory tested their robotic laser welding machine, which was designed to manufacture and join materials on a lunar surface. To investigate the effects of laser beam welding in a combined vacuum and reduced gravity environment, the team traveled aboard a commercial aircraft to an altitude at 20,000 feet, then entered a parabolic flight and a microgravity environment. Shooting up another 8,000 feet the aircraft flies up and down at a 45-degree angles to simulate gravity-free conditions for about 20 seconds each arc. During brief moments of weightlessness, the team could test the machine on several materials commonly found in spacecraft: aluminum, titanium, and stainless steel.
A network of sensors collected data to help researchers understand how the space environment affects the welding process and welded material. NASA gathered data on “temperature and heat transfer in a vacuum; the size and shape of the molten area under a laser beam; how the weld cross-section looks after it solidifies; and how mechanical properties change for welds performed in environmental conditions mimicking the lunar surface.”
The team collected data on two separate flights, completing a total of 70 parabolas and 69 successful tests. The data goes back to Ohio State’s Starlab-George Washington Carver Science Park Payload and Analog Research Facility (PARF) where it is now being analyzed in preparation for more parabolic research flights.
Other welding, joining, and allied processes including additive manufacturing will be necessary for an “in-space economy,” or large habitats in low Earth orbit, NASA says. The potential to repurpose and repair space infrastructure or building structures too large to launch are the first steps back to the Moon and beyond.
It’s been more than 50 years since humans walked on the moon. Apollo 17 in December 1972 was the eleventh and final mission of NASA’s Apollo program. In February, NASA did return to the moon with the help of Intuitive Machines, which built the Nova-C moon lander, called Odysseus, making it the first commercial landing on the moon. NASA also landed the Perseverance Rover on Mars in 2021, but future astronauts likely won’t get there without advanced manufacturing technology onboard.
