A close-up look
at the first metal
part made in space

This February, the first-ever metal part 3D-printed in space landed on Earth. Produced in the European Space Agency’s Metal 3D Printer Technology Demonstrator on the International Space Station, it is now in the hands of ESA’s engineers at ESTEC, the agency’s technical centre in the Netherlands, who poke and prod it to understand how microgravity affected its printing process.