Researchers have shown that Martian soil can be used as a 3D-printing material.
A professor at the Washington State University School of Mechanical and Materials Engineering and his team used crushed Martian regolith to demonstrate its capabilities as a 3D-printing material.
Future crewed missions to Mars might depend on the results.
"In space, 3D printing is something that has to happen if we want to think of a manned mission, because we really cannot carry everything from here," Bandyopadhyay stated. We can't come back to get it if we forget something.
The moon and Mars could be explored with off-earth manufacturing.
Mars manufacturing would reduce costs. The space shuttle cost NASA $54,000 per kilo of cargo.
The cost to get supplies to the International Space Station is less than the cost to get supplies to the Red Planet.
The researchers blended different amounts of Martian regolith with titanium. They tried to make a 3D-printer out of regolith.
Mars explorers could harvest oxygen on the red planet.
They melted the dry ingredients and put them into a 3D printer to make different shapes. The objects were tested for strength and resilience.
The titanium alloy alone was not as strong as a mixture containing 5% regolith. The team suggested that the regolith could be used for a radiation shield coating, even though it cracked after printing.
3D printing with regolith is possible, and maybe we should think in this direction because it's not just making plastic parts, which are weak, but metal-ceramic composite parts, which are strong and can be used for any kind of structural parts.
In the International Journal of Applied Ceramic Technology, the team's research was published.
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