As humanity prepares to hurl itself to Mars, it will begin with the Orion EFT-1 tomorrow morning. Launched atop a Delta IV Heavy rocket from Cape Canaveral, Orion will be carrying a small piece of 3D printing with it, according to TechWire. Assistant Professors Ron Aman and Tim Horn of the Industrial & Systems Engineering Department at North Carolina State University have 3D printed a small titanium coin that will be aboard the Orion has it makes its multi-hour, two-orbit test around the Earth.
The coin was printed by the university lab’s Arcam A2 Electron Beam Melting (EBM) machine to 3D print the coin. Using magnetic fields to send electrons close to the speed of light toward the vacuum build chamber, the electrons’ kinetic energy melted the titanium powder layer by layer. The coin itself, depicting the University’s seal, was designed by the professors with Materialise’s Magics software. This isn’t the school’s first 3D printing story in the news. We’ve actually covered NCSU a number of times as they’ve made themselves famous for 3D printing solutions to save the lives of animals, including a prosthetic leg for a dog and brace for a sea turtle’s fin.
Though the coin serves no practical function in the flight test, it does continue a tradition of stowing symbolic trinkets aboard spacecraft. Horn explains the significance of 3D printing for the flight test, “If the human race is going to travel the solar system, we are going to have to make things along the way. This idea of 3D printing is that you can make what you need, when you need it. We are a long way away from that ideal but we are getting there.”
Alongside the coin will be a dinosaur fossil from the Denver Museum of Nature and Science, a Captain Kirk action figure donated by William Shatner, and a DeLorean model from Back to the Future. NASA will also be carrying Sesame Street characters Slimy the Worm and Ernie’s rubber ducky, as the result of the partnership and in an effort as to connect with young people today. The agency elaborates, “The first human on Mars is probably in elementary school today.”
The spacecraft was initially meant to launch today, but the launch has been rescheduled for tomorrow morning, possibly around 9:30 CT. To keep up with the launch, keep an eye on the Orion mission’s twitter. When it does launch, it will head on a 60,000 mile journey, lasting about 4.5 hours before falling into the Atlantic Ocean. While on that journey, I wonder if they’ll be able to answer this fundamental question: This leaves one question: Heads or tails? The answer: In space, no one ever wins.
