College of Science & Engineering

Dr Gilles Bailet, FRAeS, and his team from the James Watt School of Engineering took parabolic flights operated by Novespace for the European Space Agency (ESA), to test underpinning technologies for 3D printing in space under conditions of microgravity. The test flights, funded by the EPSRC IAA and the Glasgow Knowledge Exchange Fund (GKEF), demonstrated that the technologies work perfectly. The team's next steps are further tests in space and commercialisation in a spin-out, paving the way for future in-space manufacturing.

The challenge

Currently, everything that humans send into Earth’s orbit is built on the surface and sent into space on rockets. This is not sustainable: rocket launches pollute the atmosphere, and their cargo eventually becomes orbital debris once it has outlived its purpose. There’s also a limit to the mass and volume of the cargo that a rocket can carry, and that cargo is at risk of getting damaged or even destroyed during the rocket’s launch.

The response

Dr Bailet is working to realise in-space manufacturing, with the ultimate goal of recycling in space and having a full circular economy in orbit. To achieve this, he’s developing 3D printing technologies that work in zero gravity. Orbital fabricators could create parts and components that can be assembled into novel equipment in orbit, such as solar reflectors to generate zero-carbon power for transmission back to Earth, improved communication antennas, or drug research stations that can create purer, more effective pharmaceuticals.

Additive manufacturing, or 3D printing, is capable of producing remarkably complex materials quickly and at low cost. Putting that technology in space and printing what we need for assembly in orbit would be fantastically useful.” – Dr Gilles Baillet

But it’s not a given that 3D printing will work under conditions of weightlessness. Parabolic flights, which create brief moments of microgravity at the apex of rollercoaster-like sharp ascents followed by rapid descents, provided the perfect environment to test Dr Bailet’s novel technologies. Funded by the EPSRC IAA and GKEF, and in collaboration with Novespace in Bordeaux, France, Dr Baillet and his team took their kit on ESA's parabolic flights in November 2024, to test whether two of the technologies underpinning 3D printing in space work under conditions of microgravity. The team took their test kit on three flights, which provided them with more than 90 brief periods of weightlessness. During each 22-second period of weightlessness, the team closely monitored the prototype’s dynamics and power consumption, which showed that the system worked perfectly in the challenges of microgravity.

^{Microgravity team, from left to right: Prof. Colin McInnes, Dr Gilles Bailet, and Satyam Bhatti}

Outcomes

Now that the technology has been extensively tested in both the lab and microgravity, Dr Bailet and his team are confident that the new technologies will work in space. Their next step is to secure funding to support the first in-space demonstration of their prototype.

Dr Bailet is also working with the University of Glasgow’s IP & Commercialisation team to translate the new technologies and associated patents into a spin-out.

Finally, Dr Bailet's team is leading efforts, supported by funding from the UK Space Agency, to ensure that future in-space manufacturing projects do not contribute to the growing problem of space debris.

Thanks to IAA, we know that the technology works in space, and we can really take the risk to actually go further and develop the rest of the technology portfolio.” – Dr Gilles Bailet