Planetary Resources 3D-printed this object with alien metal that’s not from this planet

By Drew Prindle Published April 28, 2022

You know Planetary Resources? The company that wants to mine asteroids and harvest valuable raw materials from space? Well, we just bumped into them on the show floor at CES, and they brought something incredible with them.

The object above is a small, 3D-printed prototype of a spacecraft that Planetary Resources is developing. But that’s not what’s impressive about it. The thing that makes this object so amazing is the fact that it’s made entirely out of alien metal that’s not from Earth. How crazy is that?

Recommended Videos

Now, to be fair, it’s important to note that PR didn’t actually go out and snatch an asteroid out of interplanetary space to make this happen. Instead, they recovered a hunk of meteorite from the Campo Del Cielo craters near Argentina — the site of a meteor crash that happened over 4,000 years ago. So technically PR got the meteor from Earth, but at the end of the day, it’s still a hunk of metal that didn’t originate on this planet, which is pretty wild.

To make it into something new, technicians then pulverized the meteor into a fine powder, and processed it in the new 3D Systems ProX DMP 320 — an industrial 3D printer that makes metal objects via a technique known as direct metal laser sintering. For the curious, this technique involves a high-powered laser that’s aimed at a bed of fine metal particles to selectively melt and fuse them together layer by layer.

The printing technique isn’t new, but we’re pretty sure that Planetary Resources is the first company that’s ever used it to make something out of alien metal.

Former Senior Editor, Features

Drew Prindle is an award-winning writer, editor, and storyteller who currently serves as Senior Features Editor for Digital…

Topics

Space

SpaceX Starship reaches orbit for the first time but its historic flight ends early

Starship reaches orbit for the first time and deploys 26 Starlink satellites before an early splashdown.

spacex-starship

After 13 suborbital test flights and more than $15 billion in development costs, SpaceX's Starship has finally reached orbit. The 407-foot megarocket, the most powerful ever built, lifted off from Starbase, Texas, on Monday and delivered its first real payload on it's 14th attempt. The celebration came with an asterisk, though, since SpaceX had to cut the planned 10-hour mission to roughly three hours.

https://twitter.com/SpaceX/status/2104601695711904180

Space

Starship is finally going orbital, and SpaceX has picked September 22

Flight 14 is aiming for orbit, Starlink V3 deployment and a very long day in space.

Starship rocket.

SpaceX is finally ready to give Starship its biggest test yet. The company says the massive rocket's 14th test flight is scheduled for September 22, when it will attempt to put the upper stage into Earth orbit for the first time. The launch is currently pending regulatory approval, with a 75-minute window opening at 7:15 a.m. CT.

Starship has 26 Starlink satellites to deliver

Space

Want a city on the Moon? Scientists say there’s not enough water

A billion tons still comes up short

Artist impression of activities in a Moon Base.

For decades, humanity has looked up at the Moon and wondered what it would be like to live on it. Think sprawling cities, factories, research centers, and permanent human settlements. Unfortunately, there is one fairly fundamental problem with that vision.

A new study published in Frontiers in Space Technologies argues that even the Moon's potentially enormous reserves of frozen water may be nowhere near enough to support city-sized populations sustainably. Researchers Martin Elvis and Jonathan McDowell estimate that the permanently shadowed regions near the lunar poles could contain roughly one billion tons of water. It sounds like an extraordinary amount until you put a million thirsty humans next to it.