OUTER SPACE — What happens if you are on the Space Station and you need a wrench? Just have NASA e-mail it up and print it on the 3D printer.
It is the first time that hardware was e-mailed to space.
Mike Chen, founder of Made In Space (the company behind the 3-D printer) said, “We had overheard ISS Commander Barry Wilmore mention over the radio that he needed one, so we designed one in CAD and sent it up to him faster than a rocket ever could have.”
“The socket wrench we just manufactured is the first object we designed on the ground and sent digitally to space, on the fly.
“It also marks the end of our first experiment — a sequence of 21 prints that together make up the first tools and objects ever manufactured off the surface of the Earth.”