Review of On-Orbit 3D Printing and Assembly Technology for Deep Space Exploration Application

Abstract

The solar sails for cost reduction become the trend and research focus of the world in deep space exploration in recent years, and the technologies of how to manufacture and deploy an extremely large scale deployment structure such as solar sail are particularly important, The self-fabrication space technologies based on on-orbit 3D printing and space assembly can provide an available research feasibility for our study. In this paper, the advantage and the feasibility of the on-orbit 3D printing technology is summarized firstly, and then the latest research achievements of on-orbit space assembly technology are introduced. The SpiderFabTM on-orbit manufacturing technology sponsored by NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) is introduced to break through the technical limit of traditional deployment structure with 10 000 m² size. After which, the on-orbit manufacturing technology may provide an available direction for future deep space exploration research.

Keywords

on-orbit 3D printing / on-orbit assembly / deep space exploration