CMU to Lead NASA Space Technology Research Institute

A new NASA Space Technology Research Institute led by Carnegie Mellon University seeks to shorten the cycle required to design, manufacture, and test parts that can withstand the conditions of space travel through constructing models for qualification and certification. Watch this video to see CMU’s Anthony Rollett describe the new initiative that will focus on modeling for metals additive manufacturing.

Transcript

00:00:11 Our main focus is on modeling for metals additive manufacturing, but when you look at what NASA does they do missions, and they do missions into space mainly. And so they have multiple needs for special vehicles and those vehicles, rockets for example, satellites, are always in need of special pieces that are essentially one-off things. Additive manufacturing is an absolutely ideal technology because it allows you to make a design, go into the additive manufacturing lab, make that part, and then try out that part in whatever system that you are trying to build and have a very short design, build, test cycle. Our principal partner will be the Johns Hopkins University where Somnath Ghosh is going to be my co-director of the STRI and Hopkins has great depth in materials modeling and

00:01:09 in other words predicting the performance of the parts made via printing. We anticipate that our STRI will have considerable impact over time. It will allow NASA researchers to take that part and the design and the process and predict properties—how well is that part going to perform.