With the Maxar experiment, there is now a new way to make things in space
Maxar Technologies Ltd. (MAXR), a company that works in space, is planning an experiment that will be very important for space exploration. At this point, Maxar had a long history of being attacked by bears and separating the most valuable part of the business from the rest. NASA asked Maxar and Nanoracks to put an experiment called Outpost Mars Demo-1 in a box and send it to the International Space Station.
Maxar made a robot manipulator that can cut metal in space. It is inside the container. The manipulator has to cut three pieces out of high-strength steel that won’t rust and is usually used to make the stages of launch vehicles. The idea is that in the future, robots in space will be able to cut up used rocket stages and turn them into building materials that can be used in space. At first glance, the job seems easy: a split disc for thin metal doesn’t seem like a problem. But the space saw shouldn’t make trash, because even tiny pieces of metal can damage other spacecraft or make the air inside the space station dirty in the future.
Maxar said that it was able to solve this problem with the help of a trash collection system and a cutting element that rotates very quickly but cuts metal by heating and melting it instead of cutting it mechanically. Most likely, we’re talking about friction cutting, which is used in industry to do things like drill holes without wasting any material. In these kinds of systems, a fast-moving disk melts the metal and moves it to the edges of the cut. This technology needs to be taken into space because it can be used not only to cut metal but also, in the future, to weld it.
If the Outpost Mars Demo-1 experiment goes well, Maxar will have technology that can be used in space stations, repair satellites, and scavengers. Maxar’s division for developing robot manipulators for space has been through a hard time, but it’s clear that the company still knows what it’s doing and is still a technological leader in this area.st
