Astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) no longer have to wait for a delivery from Earth if they are missing some gizmo in space. With the addition of a 3D printer aboard the space station they may now make a certain number of components themselves.

In November, NASA created history by successfully 3D printing the first object in space. An additive manufacturing device, or 3D printer, was turned on, and initiated the first official 3D print on the ISS. Developed in partnership with NASA’s Marshall space flight center and Ames research center, the project takes a step towards commercially and sustainably fabricating objects off of our planet.

The first print job was a small plate for mounting the 3D printer extruder print head that is the important part of the printer where the plastic material is heated and becomes liquid, so it can be squeezed out of a small nozzle. When the layer after layer of plastic placed on top of each other, 3D objects slowly becoming the reality.

After doing an initial calibration, engineers on the ground sent commands to the printer to make its first object. This first print serves to demonstrate the potential of the technology to produce replacement parts on demand if a critical component fails in space. The printer will be controlled from the control center on Earth that sends print jobs up and tells the astronauts when the object is ready for pickup.

“This first print is the initial step toward providing an on-demand machine shop capability away from Earth,” Niki Werkheiser, project manager for the International Space Station 3-D Printer project, said in a statement. “The space station is the only laboratory where we can fully test this technology in space.”

The plate says ‘MADE IN SPACE’ and the logo of NASA were printed without problems, though the plastic was something better to the tray print than expected. If the printer works as planned, astronauts will be able to make simple things based on instructions from the ground.

Era of in-space manufacturing

As NASA ventures further into space, whether to redirect an asteroid or sending humans to Mars, the space agency needs transformative technology to reduce cargo weight and volume. In the future, perhaps astronauts will be able to print the tools and components they need in space. NASA hopes that astronauts will be able to print a variety of spare parts and tools to be used in space, and which would otherwise take a long time and cost for the sendoff from Earth.

“This is the first time we’ve ever used a 3D printer in space, and we are learning, even from these initial operations,” Werkheiser said. “As we print more parts, we’ll be able to learn whether some of the effects we are seeing are caused by microgravity or just part of the normal fine-tuning process for printing. When we get the parts back on Earth, we’ll be able to do a more detailed analysis to find out how they compare to parts printed on Earth.”

NASA says the space station will be a good spot to test this kind of stuff out. Additive manufacturing with 3-D printers will allow space crews to be less reliant on supply missions from Earth and lead to sustainable, self-reliant exploration missions where resupply is difficult and costly. The space station provides the optimal place to perfect this technology in microgravity.

The first 3D printed objects built in space will be returned to Earth in 2015 for detailed analysis and comparison to identical ground control samples. The goal of this analysis is to verify that the 3-D printing process works the same in microgravity as it does on Earth.

The future is going to be very exciting for manufacturing in space. NASA and other space agencies are developing new technologies in order to alleviate the need to launch the feedstock. Now time will tell whether the 3D printer can make objects that can actually be used for something useful on the space station.