By Giulia Marchisio, Roberto Angelini and Nicola Peverati

Crew Dragon’s engine combustion chamber was printed with a metal Additive Manufacturing system using Inconel, a Nickel superalloy that provides excellent mechanical properties even at very high temperatures. The use of 3D printing has helped achieve Space X’s goal of reducing the cost of space missions. If we consider the Polar program that ended in 2008, for example, it went from $3947/kg to about $1930/kg. If we take into consideration the Space Shuttle, also active until 10 years ago, costs are even reduced tenfold.

In fact, additive manufacturing reduces material waste and the equipment needed to produce parts, but more importantly, it allows very complex shapes to be made. It is therefore possible to redesign the parts to be produced without worrying about geometry, but focusing solely on weight reduction, and this does not only affect the space sector.

We believe that technology transfer between different sectors is the key to competitiveness-that’s why we support the cross-sector public-private partnership formula of our Competence Center, which counts Thales Alenia Space among its consortium members.

We asked for input from the director of Engineering for the Exploration and Science Domain at Thales Alenia Space about the role of Additive Manufacturing in their projects, particularly on the European Service Module of the Orion spacecraft, which, as part of NASA’s ARTEMIS project, will take the next astronauts to the Moon.

The growing importance of Additive Manufacturing is also reflected in the ongoing applications for the Exploration and Science domain at Thales Alenia Space in Turin. In recent years, in addition to verifying that what is produced with new additive technologies meets stringent quality requirements, cost models have also been developed to define where and when to use these technologies and when to prefer them to established solutions in aluminum/titanium and composite materials. Indeed, the greatest advantages exist when complex assembly/assembly processes are involved or when very long raw material procurement times can be avoided.
Today, after experimenting with manufacturing structures for meteorite shielding, we are qualifying water canisters for the ORION MPCV lunar service module. In parallel, very interesting and promising are the ongoing studies to carry out additive manufacturing operations directly in orbit or on the surface of the Moon or Mars.

Roberto Angelini, Director of Engineering for the Exploration and Science Domain, Thales Alenia Space

In CIM4.0 we are working to make this technology accessible and adoptable by Italian and European SMEs, not just Elon Musk.