Spacewalking astronauts have set free the world’s first satellite made with a 3D printer.
Russians Fyodor Yurchikhin and Sergey Ryazanskiy ventured outside the International Space Station and released five nano-satellites by hand.
The casing of the first one to be released was made entirely with a 3D printer.
Two cosmonauts began a planned six-hour spacewalk today at 10:36 a.m. EDT. https://t.co/O89uHUaTCL pic.twitter.com/zooLpQF8M2
— Intl. Space Station (@Space_Station) August 17, 2017
Researchers want to see how 3D-made parts weather the space environment.
The others have traditional spacecraft parts.
Each weighs 10lbs to 24lbs and is 1ft to 2ft. They are expected to orbit for six months.
One commemorates the 60th anniversary of the world’s first satellite, Sputnik 1, launched on October 4 1957.
Another pays tribute to Russia’s father of rocketry, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky. He was born 160 years ago next month.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules here