you know how on star trek, people can just walk up to a machine and manufacturewhatever they need? well, we’re trying to do that for real-lifespace travel, too, because it’s expensive to send everythingyou could possibly need into space. it’s so much easier to just make tools andsupplies on demand.
3d programs for 3d printing, pretty soon, we might even be able to 3d printentire organs in space. and then bring them back down to make lifebetter here on earth. in june, three tech companies tested a devicemeant to one day print working human organs in space.
the printer flew on a so-called “vomit comet†a plane that flies in a pattern that createsa few seconds of weightlessness at a time and it printed some small bits of heart andblood vessel tissue. the international space station already hasits own working 3d printer for plastic aka the closest thing we have to a star trekreplicator in real life. if they really needed to, astronauts couldprint out almost anything, as long as it’s meant to be made of plasticand fits within the size constraints of the printer. and earth-based space agencies can send designsto the station to print, without having to send a physical object upon a rocket.
but the 3d printing approach isn’t justfor making plastic tools. scientists and doctors are trying to developa way to manufacture human organs, too, out of adult stem cells -- the cells whosejob it is to repair damaged tissue. if we could 3d print organs, that could savea lot more lives than our current system, which relies on finding an organ donor that’sa match. since 3d printed organs would be made fromthe patient’s own cells, they would definitely be a match. and they’d be available on demand. theycould even be customized to fit. the printer that was tested last month can’tprint full organs or anything.
but it can print tissue. 3d printers that print tissue -- or bioprinters-- print using bioink, a solution of adult stem cells and supportmaterial. it prints the bioink in a detailed patternthat tries to mimic the natural structure of the tissue. the support material can be made of differentsubstances, but its job is to form a solid structure thatencourages the cells to grow. and it turns out that it’s a lot easierto print cells in space, because the bioink just needs less junk init.
on earth, bioink needs to be very thick tosupport the cells. the support material causes a lot of stresson the cells during the printing process. and you can’t print an organ with dead cells. in space, printers can use a thinner bioinkand a finer printer tip. the finer printer tip allows them to placeindividual cells more precisely. and the thinner ink is easier on the cells. the cells can then eventually build theirown supports to stabilize the printed structure so it canbe brought back to earth. right now, this technology can make littlebits and pieces of tissue, like grafts,
and the companies plan to make a scaled-downversion of the device to eventually fly on the international spacestation. building a functional organ, with blood vesselsand a complex microscopic structure, is a long ways off, but with more research,we might eventually get there. so, being able to 3d print organs in spacecould both improve healthcare here on earth, and help us explore the final frontier. but even relatively close to home, there arestill new things to discover. researchers working with the canada-france-hawaiitelescope in hawaii have spotted what seems to be a new dwarfplanet
a small, icy world similar to pluto, called2015 rr245. another catchy name from the scientists studyingplanets. the solar system beyond neptune, a regioncalled the kuiper belt, is full of these icy rocks. this is not the hypothetical ninth planetthat was announced earlier this year. astronomers are still looking for that one,and if it exists, it’ll be a lot bigger. this new world is thought to be about 700kilometers across, which would put it in the top 20 biggest objectsin the kuiper. it has an incredibly lopsided orbit aroundthe sun it’s 34 times the distance from earth tothe sun at its closest point,
and 120 times at its farthest point. right now, it’s on the approach. but astronomers still aren’t totally sureif rr245 is actually a dwarf planet. to be a dwarf planet, the object must be round,but we’re not yet sure that rr245 is round we don’t know if it has enough mass forits gravity to pull it into a spherical shape. but the object is bigger than mimas, one ofsaturn’s moons. since mimas is big enough to be round, thiseven-bigger object is probably round, too. and there’s still so much of the kuiperbelt that we haven’t detected yet! so there are probably tons of dwarf planetsstill waiting to be discovered.
but because kuiper belt objects are very faint,tiny, and very far away, they’re tough to spot. so it’s possible that we won’t be discoveringmany more dwarf planets until new, better telescopes get fired up in a decadeor so.
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