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RandomFactor writes:

NASA has awarded Silicon Valley startup company Made in Space, $73.7 million to give it's "Archinaut One" in space assembly craft an in orbit test run in 2022.

In a statement Friday, NASA announced the award and stated

NASA has awarded [the] contract to Made In Space, Inc. of Mountain View, California, to demonstrate the ability of a small spacecraft, called Archinaut One, to manufacture and assemble spacecraft components in low-Earth orbit. The in-space robotic manufacturing and assembly technologies could be important for America's Moon to Mars exploration approach.

The contract is the start of the second phase of a partnership established through NASA's Tipping Point solicitation. The public-private partnership combines NASA resources with an industry contribution of at least 25% of the program costs, shepherding the development of critical space technologies while also saving the agency, and American taxpayers, money.

Archinaut One is expected to launch on a Rocket Lab Electron rocket from New Zealand no earlier than 2022. Once it's positioned in low-Earth orbit, the spacecraft will 3D-print two beams that extend 32 feet (10 meters) out from each side of the spacecraft. As manufacturing progresses, each beam will unfurl two solar arrays that generate as much as five times more power than traditional solar panels on spacecraft of similar size.

Space based manufacturing comes with multiple benefits including:

- Enabling remote, in-space construction of communications antennae, large-scale space telescopes and other complex structures;
- Enabling small satellites to deploy large surface area power systems and reflectors that currently are reserved for larger satellites;
- Eliminating spacecraft volume limits imposed by rockets; and,
- Avoiding the inherent risk of spacewalks by performing some tasks currently completed by astronauts.

Archinaut has already completed testing in a NASA thermal vacuum chamber (TVAC) at the Ames Research Center that emulates space conditions (albeit in a gravity field.) The company has also sent two 3d printers to the ISS (working without gravity), one of which tested manufacture of ZBLAN, an exotic (and very expensive) Flouride glass optical fiber that is difficult to produce on Earth, but much simpler in the microgravity environment on the ISS.

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