NASA has for the first time ‘emailed’ hardware to space after the US space agency sent a new wrench as an emailed digital file for the International Space Station’s onboard 3D printer. The printer, a collaboration between NASA and company Made In Space, was shipped up to the ISS in September.
A request from ISS astronaut Barry Wilmore for a ratcheting socket wrench led the Made In Space team to design the tool after which it sent the digital printing file to NASA which uploaded it to the station.
Once the digital file arrived on the ISS, Wilmore fired up the printer, which churned out 20 separate parts which Wilmore assembled into the exact wrench he had requested, ‘Tech Times’ reported.
“The socket wrench we just manufactured is the first object we designed on the ground and sent digitally to space, on the fly,” Made In Space founder Mike Chen said.
“This is the first time we’ve ever ‘emailed’ hardware to space. Because it’s a lot faster to send digital data to space than it is to send physical objects, it makes more sense to 3D-print things in space, when we can, instead of launching them,” Chen said.