CAS Completes In-Orbit Demonstration of Space Metal Additive Manufacturing Technology

Recently, the Institute of Mechanics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) has jointly completed the in-orbit demonstration and verification of space metal additive manufacturing technology on the Qingzhou test spacecraft together with the Innovation Academy for Microsatellites of CAS. The achievement marks another important technological progress in the field of space metal manufacturing, laying a solid foundation for China’s future space exploration and in-orbit manufacturing applications.

Xinhua News Agency reports that the space metal additive manufacturing payload was launched aboard the Qingzhou test spacecraft by the Zhongke Aerospace Lijian-2 Y1 rocket. The spacecraft successfully carried out the demonstration and verification of space metal additive manufacturing technology in a 600-kilometer orbit and completed the scheduled experimental tasks smoothly.

The mission focused on verifying key capabilities, including the compatibility between the metal additive manufacturing payload and the cargo spacecraft platform, safety and reliability, ground telemetry control, condition monitoring, data and image transmission, full-process automatic execution, and metal melting deposition technology in the space environment. These verifications have effectively confirmed the feasibility of the technology in the space environment.

Compared with ground-based manufacturing, space metal additive manufacturing not only faces complex mechanism problems such as droplet transition, liquid bridge stability and molten pool evolution under microgravity conditions, but also has to solve a series of engineering challenges, including payload lightweighting, anti-launch vibration of precision components, energy interface adaptation, telemetry and remote control, autonomous operation under limited operation windows, and in-orbit operational safety. It is a cutting-edge direction in the international space manufacturing field.

CCTV News notes that relying on the research foundation of microgravity science and space experiments, the team from the Institute of Mechanics of CAS has continuously tackled key problems in the mechanism, process methods and equipment development of metal additive manufacturing under microgravity conditions. It has also established a verification technology system for space metal additive manufacturing based on the cargo spacecraft platform in collaboration with the Innovation Academy for Microsatellites of CAS.

During this mission, the space metal additive manufacturing payload was activated through ground telemetry, and metal melting deposition was realized by means of laser wire feeding, stably completing the process demonstration of metal melting deposition forming and verifying the stability of multiple remote control starts of the payload equipment. Wang Wei, chief researcher of the Institute of Mechanics of CAS, said the experiment shows that China has initially possessed the system verification capability of key space metal additive manufacturing technologies.

The technology is expected to serve major scenarios such as in-orbit manufacturing and maintenance applications, space facility spare parts manufacturing, structural part repair, deep space mission independent support and in-situ manufacturing capability construction for deep space exploration in the future, promoting the transformation of space missions from "using what is carried" to "making what is needed". The joint team will further carry out cooperation to accelerate the construction of China’s space manufacturing technology standard system and engineering application capabilities.