A photo from open sources
3D Systems from South Carolina Demonstrates Worldwide The public is a unique exhibit. Company employees succeeded Be the first to print an object using a 3D printer material of extraterrestrial origin.
Specialists chopped a piece of metal meteorite, found last year in Argentina, and created from it special powder suitable for bulk printing.
Americans are convinced that in the distant future, such technology allow the colonialists of other planets to use effectively local materials for creating dwellings, equipment and various items life.
The resulting bizarre shape is a small copy of the Arkyd spacecraft, which is being tested in the present is the American company “Planetary Resources”, planning to mine minerals on asteroids.
Katie Lewis, marketing director of 3D Systems, reports that making the printing material of this figure was pretty difficult process. Specialists had to vaporize using plasma from a meteorite all unnecessary substances, and then grind in a vacuum received metal.
The powder was placed in a special industrial 3D printer, not having world analogues. The device fashioned a model in layers in about an hour and forty minutes.
According to the researchers, the next step in their experiment will be 3D printing of meteorite material in conditions microgravity.
Note that the extraction of resources outside our planet considered a very promising industry. According to many world scientists when the level of technological development of humanity will make industrial development of asteroids is possible, the real one will begin space gold rush. Sources of valuable useful fossils, experts say, will first of all become order one and a half thousand asteroids that are located within us within the reach of spacecraft.
