{"id":139730,"date":"2022-05-23T14:23:06","date_gmt":"2022-05-23T19:23:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/05\/satellite-antennas-could-be-3d-printed-in-space-to-massively-reduce-launch-costs"},"modified":"2022-05-23T14:23:06","modified_gmt":"2022-05-23T19:23:06","slug":"satellite-antennas-could-be-3d-printed-in-space-to-massively-reduce-launch-costs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2022\/05\/satellite-antennas-could-be-3d-printed-in-space-to-massively-reduce-launch-costs","title":{"rendered":"Satellite antennas could be 3D printed in space to massively reduce launch costs"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a class=\"aligncenter blog-photo\" href=\"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog.images\/satellite-antennas-could-be-3d-printed-in-space-to-massively-reduce-launch-costs.jpg\"><\/a><\/p>\n<p>\u201cSpacecraft antenna designs are challenging due to their conflicting requirements for high gain, wide bandwidth, and low weight,\u201d Mitsubishi announced. \u201cHigh gain and wide bandwidth necessarily require a large aperture, but economical orbital deployment conventionally dictates that designs be lightweight and small enough to fit or fold inside a launch vehicle or satellite deployment mechanism.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Mitsubishi also claimed that, with its new technology, \u2018additive-manufacturing in space has now become possible.\u2019 However, it\u2019s worth noting that the International Space Station already <a class=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/www.nasa.gov\/mission_pages\/station\/research\/news\/3d-printing-in-space-long-duration-spaceflight-applications\/\" rel=\"nofollow\" target=\"_blank\">features a 3D printer<\/a> launched to the orbital station back in 2014. The European Space Agency <a class=\"\" href=\"https:\/\/interestingengineering.com\/esa-to-test-3d-printing-in-space-using-scrap-metals-from-the-moon\" rel=\"dofollow\" target=\"_blank\" data-id=\"embedded internal links\" data-type=\"link\" data-url=\"https:\/\/interestingengineering.com\/esa-to-test-3d-printing-in-space-using-scrap-metals-from-the-moon\">also announced<\/a> last year it would experiment with 3D printing in space using scrap metals from the Moon.<\/p>\n<p>Still, the company\u2019s new method has the potential to reduce the cost of satellite launches significantly, and it could pave the way for the construction of other vital parts for future space missions.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>\u201cSpacecraft antenna designs are challenging due to their conflicting requirements for high gain, wide bandwidth, and low weight,\u201d Mitsubishi announced. \u201cHigh gain and wide bandwidth necessarily require a large aperture, but economical orbital deployment conventionally dictates that designs be lightweight and small enough to fit or fold inside a launch vehicle or satellite deployment mechanism.\u201d [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1489,2028],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-139730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-3d-printing","category-satellites"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=139730"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/139730\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=139730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=139730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=139730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}