No secret has ever been made of Made In Space’s Archinaut technology. As early as 2015, the space-based manufacturing company was openly alluding to its development. At TCT @ CES 2016, Archinaut featured in President Andrew Rush’s presentation. Later, in an interview with TCT, Archinaut was on Rush’s agenda once more.
Earlier this month, Made In Space (MIS) provided a timely update on the project’s progress with two brief demonstration videos, previewing how the process can work on two spacecraft platforms: Dilo and Ulisses. The profound soundtrack on the backdrop of these videos evokes a measure of prestige, evolution, and subsequently suspense, as the technology is still at least two years away from being demonstrated in-flight.
Read about TCT Magazine's visit to Made In Space's NASA Research Park Facility here.
Speaking to TCT, Rush describes Archinaut as “an in-space additive manufacturing and assembly technology that delivers the capability to build space-optimised portions on spacecraft and satellite rather than what we do now which is building everything on the ground and kind of origami-fold up the deployable portions, like reflectors and solar panels, that fit on top of the rocket and sent to space and unfolded there.”
A technology that prints and assembles structures autonomously, Archinaut is set to change the way parts are designed and built, but maintain how their current counterparts perform and endure. Archinaut will enable satellites to build parts, like antennas and reflectors, while in orbit, rather than rely on these structures to survive in the high G-force environment of a rocket launch.
Made In Space’s teasers, embedded at the head and foot of this article, present the Dilo and Ulisses, small spacecraft which can autonomously build larger parts, thanks to Archinaut. This will enable space explorers to make the bus smaller, which makes the satellite lighter, and means a smaller rocket can be flown into space, all amounting to a significant cost saving, and an expansion of access to space.
Rush expands: “[Archinaut is] an extended structure additive manufacturing device. Essentially, we can additively manufacture a polymer or multiple materials or metal structures that are much larger than the additive manufacturing device itself. It can make variable geometries and structures, attachment features and removable joints, embedded electronics and a wide variety of things. It really lets us be extremely adaptable and do things in space that we simply couldn’t do [before].”
Archinaut has been in development since 2010, when the company was founded. In seven years, Made In Space has taken the technology from a concept to a functioning process, and now has 45 employees, as well as a NASA Tipping Point Technologies contract. Through a two-year program MIS will soon be demonstrating the technology in an external vacuum chamber which simulates the temperature swings and pressure environments of space. The second half of this program will focus on the manufacturing and assembly of 3D printed components to build functional objects in the vacuum chamber.
Made in Space Archinaut
Archinaut Attaching Solar Panels to a Satellite.
As the company’s name suggests, Made In Space has been committed to manufacturing in space since its foundation. When focusing on Archinaut, Rush and his colleagues sought to change the way satellites and other space-bound equipment were developed. Its purpose when in orbit should influence the design far more than its practicality on its way up, Made in Space insist.
“[Archinaut] saves a huge amount of time and eliminates the majority of design of the parts that are put on satellites,” Rush explains. “The design of parts that go on to a satellite are not dictated by what it’s doing when it gets to space, what it’s doing for a 10-15-year long mission, but actually dictated by the rocket ride up, to make sure the satellite doesn’t fall apart, damage the rocket, or render itself inoperable. So, by being able to do manufacturing in space we can eliminate many of those requirements and open up that design window.
“I think Archinaut has the ability to make us completely rethink how we do satellite design, and make it more cost effective and make the capabilities significantly more impactful.”
The structures Rush talks of include antennas and reflectors significant size and sparsity, which reflect electromagnetic waves, and trusses that may hold sensors for satellites at appropriate distances.
“Going on a little bit further, a few more years of development, one of the really cool things about this technology is that it could be used to actually construct and augment or repair and reconfigure future commercial space stations,” continues Rush. “The International Space Station, it’s a 100-billion-dollar asset, 100 rocket launches, it’s an amazing technological achievement but we’re not going to have the infrastructure, the luxury or risk tolerance to do that on future commercial space stations. We want to do it robotically, autonomously and Archinaut is capable of that.”
Rush projects five reflectors measuring five metres in length can be printed in the space of a week, which he considers convenient by current satellite deployment standards and check-out times. He explains the system is designed to be resilient and able to re-manufacture parts itself, but aware of the potential for glitches here and there, Made In Space is covering itself. A technology that can re-write subsequent G-codes to maintain the structures is currently under the development, for example.
Made in Space archinaut
How far into space Archinaut will be utilised is completely mission dependent. Made In Space were considering both low orbit and geosynchronous orbit during Archinaut’s development.
“There’s different considerations in different environments,” Rush explains. “But we very much could see this technology one day being used around Mars.”
Eight unmanned spacecraft are currently hosted by Mars, with missions to send humans to the Red Planet still under consideration, nearly 60 years after the first. Made In Space is committed to the continued exploration of mars and the rest of the solar system, just as it is making autonomous manufacturing in space a reality. The seven-year old company has never made secret Archinaut, a technology that looks set to achieve that goal. Instead it’s in the business of uncovering secrets, in particular those kept by outer space.
