19 August, 2017
During a lengthy spacewalk on Thursday, Russian cosmonauts Fyodor Yurchikhin and Sergey Ryazanskiy released five mini satellites by hand, including one made nearly entirely of 3D-printed materials.
Russians Fyodor Yurchikhin (FYOH-dor YOUR-cheek-in) and Sergey Ryazanskiy (SIR-gay RIH-zan-skee) ventured outside the International Space Station on Thursday. So were the battery packs inside.
Researchers wanted to see how the 3-D made parts of the satellites perform in space.
The latest satellite launch marks the first time the Russian team has launched a 3D-printed satellite.
Manufactured at Tomsk Polytechnic University in Siberia, the 3D-printed probe features regular electronics. The satellite also contains messages and greetings written by the students of the Institute, one of the messages written on the satellite commemorated 60 years of the launch of Sputnik-1 which was sent to space on October 4, 1957. They're expected to orbit for six months. While another message pays tribute to Konstantin Tsiolkovsky, who is considered the father of Russia's rocketry, according to the report.
The remaining two small satellites involve navigation and other experiments.
Deployment of all the satellites, weighing 10lb to 24lb each, was completed within an hour of the spacewalk.
The mission took over 7 hours - at least an hour longer than expected. All but one task got done. A flight controller replied that he'd do it for them. Yurchikhin and Ryazanskiy also collected fresh dust samples as part of the ongoing effort to monitor microbial communities living on the space station.
