Bringing 3D Printing to Mars

Researchers at Washington State University are testing a new high-performance material made from crushed Martian rock and titanium alloy — showing potential for 3D printing on Mars.

“In space, 3D printing is something that has to happen if we want to think of a manned mission because we really cannot carry everything from here,” said Amit Bandyopadhyay  , a professor in WSU’s School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering. “And if we forgot something, we cannot come back to get it.”

Transcript

00:00:00 [Music] in my research i'm using metal additive manufacturing and it's a kind of layered based structures it means that when you actually create any 3d objects each layer will be printed on the top of the previously built layers three-dimensional printing or 3d printing is essentially a must for future space missions because we will

00:00:35 not be able to take everything from earth and we use those martian regolith to print something with metals so that you can actually use these parts to replace a load bearing structural parts in case you need it if something bad happens in our manned mission or unmanned mission in mars if we can establish a 3d printing base we should be able to do this kind of things and

00:00:56 this is exploratory work these are visionary work