Within the device are six heat exchangers-palm-size nickel-alloy plates that protect key parts of the instrument from the effects of high temperatures.
To create oxygen, MOXIE heats Martian air up to nearly 1,500 degrees Fahrenheit (800 degrees Celsius). This device will test technology that, in the future, could produce industrial quantities of oxygen to create rocket propellant on Mars, helping astronauts launch back to Earth. Perseverance's six other 3-D-printed parts can be found in an instrument called the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment, or MOXIE.
X-ray images like these are used to check for defects inside of parts in this case, engineers checked to make sure the channels were free of 3D printing powder. Martian air will be carried inside the tiny channels in the center of this part, where they'll be pre-heated. This X-ray image shows the inside of a 3D-printed part inside of Perseverance's MOXIE instrument. In fact, the parts, which were 3-D printed by a vendor called Carpenter Additive, have three or four times less mass than if they'd been produced conventionally. To make the instrument as light as possible, the JPL team designed PIXL's two-piece titanium shell, a mounting frame, and two support struts that secure the shell to the end of the arm to be hollow and extremely thin. PIXL shares space with other tools in the 88-pound (40-kilogram) rotating turret at the end of the rover's 7-foot-long (2-meter-long) robotic arm. Short for the Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry, the lunchbox-size device will help the rover seek out signs of fossilized microbial life by shooting X-ray beams at rock surfaces to analyze them.
Of the 11 printed parts going to Mars, five are in Perseverance's PIXL instrument. The inset shows the front half of the two-piece shell part it was finished.
The outer shell of PIXL, one of the instruments aboard NASA's Perseverance Mars rover, includes several parts that were made of 3D-printed titanium. NASA has since continued to test 3-D printing for use in spacecraft to make sure the reliability of the parts is well understood.Īs "secondary structures," Perseverance's printed parts wouldn't jeopardize the mission if they didn't work as planned, but as Pate said, "Flying these parts to Mars is a huge milestone that opens the door a little more for additive manufacturing in the space industry." It landed in 2012 with a 3-D-printed ceramic part inside the rover's ovenlike Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) instrument. "You build each feature layer by layer, and soon you have a detailed part."Ĭuriosity, Perseverance's predecessor, was the first mission to take 3-D printing to the Red Planet. "It's like working with papier-mâché," said Andre Pate, the group lead for additive manufacturing at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. Doing so allows engineers to play with unique designs and traits, such as making hardware lighter, stronger, or responsive to heat or cold. Instead of forging, molding, or cutting materials, 3-D printing relies on lasers to melt powder in successive layers to give shape to something.