The commercial product foreseen from this SBIR proposal is a novel, low risk approach to fabricating in space, enabling the creation of spare parts, tools, and upgrades for the International Space Station. The Additive Manufacturing Facility proposed is capable of significantly reducing launch costs and improving space utilization. Currently the ISS is fully dependent on Earth. Re-supply missions make extended stay on station possible. If a production facility were to exist on the ISS the crew would demand less on re-supply missions and could have increased redundancy due to the ability to produce goods when needed. The facility will allow NASA, other government agencies, and companies the ability to build what they need on-demandwhether it be hardware, spare tools, a small CubeSat, or even in-space fabricated 3D art. Key initial NASA applications include: * Safety and emergency repair solutions, giving astronauts a much-needed contingency plan, * ISS repair and life extension, * Ability to build broken parts on demand, increasing reliability and capability to legacy experiments, * Hardware on-demand, including the capability to build spare parts, tools, laboratory equipment such as syringes, modular laboratory configurations, and more, * Science experiment building and repairing, * Exploration research, building the research needed for such a facility to be used on long duration space flight missions, * Spacecraft assembly and check-out. With the Additive Manufacturing Facility, commercial companies and non-NASA government agencies will be able to pay-to-build what they need on the ISS. Although it is anticipated that the full use of this facility won't be completely realized until completion, the commercial applications apply to three broad areas: (1) Inside the ISS (including spares, tools, science experiments, parts for astronauts, and hardware for other entities inside the ISS), (2) Outside the ISS (specifically spacecraft and satellites that are built on-demand, while also saving money, mass, and volume; customers include satellite companies, research institutes, defense agencies, and more), (3) Ground-based applications (for fabricating a range of products that could only be fabricated in zero-g).
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