A Southwest Florida tech company is preparing to send itself and the local economy into space in 2023 using a 3D printed satellite.
Space Tech founder Wil Glaser has set his sights high and hopes that what's now just a mock-up rocket will lead his company into the future.
"It's an 'eyes on the prize,' because ultimately, our satellites will be launched on similar rockets, like the Falcon 9," Glaser said. "We'll develop satellites, build satellites, and then develop other space applications.”
The application that Glaser and his tech team want to take to space is a unique form of 3D printed CubeSat. The advantage of using a 3D printer is that some concepts can be produced in a matter of days, Glaser said.
“We have to use something like version 20,” Space Tech engineer Mike Carufe said. “We have five different variants of each version.”
CubeSats are design-intensive, essentially a satellite in a box. It's designed to efficiently house all the hardware and software needed to operate in space, and Space Tech's current version fits in a briefcase.
"It's the latest and greatest," Carufe said. “This is where we start to really push the limits of how sats can be combined. So, we have swept-back solar panels, we have tall, very tall zoom LEDs on the bottom, and everything starts to mechanize.”
3D printers are obviously well-suited to making satellites, using a powder-to-metal process to build parts layer by layer.
When heated, it fuses all the metals together and turns the plastic parts into actual metal parts that can be sent into space, Carufe explained. Not much assembly is required, so Space Tech doesn't need a large facility.
Post time: Jan-06-2023