Technologies

Focus

The proposed centre will develop a broad range of manufacturing technologies from concrete to polymer based medical diagnostic kits to single crystals and foams in micro-gravity environments. Faculty with wide backgrounds from aerospace, civil, electrical, mechanical, and materials engineering to the sciences (physics and chemistry) have teamed up to develop these technologies.

The manufacturing technologies needed for space will differ substantially from the earth-based ones owing to the constraints posed by limited space, limited power, micro-gravity influence, and limitations to track process inputs and outputs and to effectively recycle by-products.

The centre will address both fundamental studies and technology developments. Micro-gravity influence in several physical phenomenon will be studied, and the know-how will influence the process technologies developed. To this end, a battery of micro-gravity tests is planned in platforms ranging from drop-towers to parabolic flights and possibly extending to sub-orbital flights.