NASA buys $750K gadget to recycle 3D-printed plastic on the space station

By Kelly Hodgkins Published June 27, 2016

NASA is paying big bucks to experiment with plastics recycling on the International Space Station. The space agency recently inked a deal with Firmamentum, a division of Tethers Unlimited, that is worth a whopping $750,000. What is this magical device that NASA is paying three-quarters or a million for? A combo 3D printer and plastics recycler, reports GeekWire.

Aptly named the Refabricator, the device can 3D print an object and then recycle that plastic for another round of printing. The system uses a recycling process known as Positrusion, which was developed for NASA as part of a previously funded project. The Refabricator machine is designed for use on the ISS and is as easy to use as a microwave, claims Tethers Unlimited. Users simply place a discarded 3D-printed object or other compatible scrap plastic into the machine, press the button, and wait for the machine to work its Positrusion magic. The end product is a filament that can be fed into the companion 3D printer.

Recommended Videos

NASA will use the Refabricator to expand its 3D-printing capabilities on the ISS. The agency already is experimenting with 3D printing in space, having installed several 3D printers on the space station earlier this year. The Refabricator will take on a different role, serving as an experimental unit to test the feasibility of recycling plastics in space.

“This is an experiment to see how many times you can recycle plastic in the microgravity environment before the polymers break down,” said Tethers Unlimited’s CEO Rob Hoyt to GeekWire during the recent NewSpace 2016 conference in Seattle, Washington.

Firmamentum plans to deliver the first Refabricator units to NASA in 2017. Money for the development of the Refabricator is being provided by NASA’s Small Business Innovation Research program and NASA’s In-Space Manufacturing project based out of the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

Former Contributor

Kelly's been writing online for ten years, working at Gizmodo, TUAW, and BGR among others. Living near the White Mountains of…

Topics

Emerging Tech

Robot dogs were supposed to help humans. Now humans are being asked to babysit them

One startup offered $20 an hour to walk its robots, with some heavy lifting required when the dogs overheat

GO2 robot dog

San Francisco startup Dimensional advertised for people to walk robot dogs through city streets. The New York Times reported that the job could include carrying a roughly 33-pound robot back to the office if it overheated. A lift home is an awkward requirement for a labor-saving machine.

Keeping the hardware running is only one challenge. Anthropic's robotics tests found that language models mostly failed when controlling joints directly, but did better when directing trained controllers. Giving an AI agent a body doesn't teach it to handle ordinary household objects.

Emerging Tech

Forget smartwatches; this smart bed could soon help keep you safe from being a fall risk

Who needs another wearable when your mattress could help spot fall risks?

Bed

Soon, a mattress protector may be more than a bed cover. Australian medtech company Sleeptite and researchers at RMIT University have received a US patent for FlexiSense, a smart bedding technology that tracks body position and posture to help caregivers identify when older residents may be at risk of falling.

The technology is being developed for Sleeptite’s in-bed monitoring system, REMi, and was recently on display at The MedTech Conference in Boston. A peer-reviewed study in Flexible and Printed Electronics says the sensors can also be made at scale without sacrificing performance or durability.

Emerging Tech

Anthropic’s sensitive internal data was exposed, and AI helped make it happen

Even the company behind Claude isn't immune to AI-powered security threats, as researchers discovered some worrying vulnerabilities.

Claude Anthropic Featured

AI companies spend enormous amounts of time convincing us their technology is safe and secure. But what happens when those same companies become targets of increasingly sophisticated AI-powered attacks? Anthropic, the company behind Claude, is now facing that question. According to a Washington Post report, cybersecurity startup Cathedral discovered vulnerabilities that let its researchers access sensitive information in Anthropic's internal systems.

The researchers used AI agents to identify potential entry points in less than 12 hours. Interestingly, they didn't need to crack Claude itself. Instead, they exploited weaknesses in third-party business applications that Anthropic uses for everyday operations. Anthropic's security testing program disclosed the findings, which allows outside researchers to identify and report vulnerabilities.