Eight Romanian students made a special 3D printer that was launched into space
A 3D printer was sent into space by eight Romanian students and it was perfectly functional. The printer successfully printed 24 experimental samples.
After being specially designed to be able to print in the absence of gravity, the 3D printer was sent into space, where it reached its maximum altitude of 76.8 km.
“Two hours before the launch, the rocket is prepared, the weather conditions are checked and the countdown begins, exactly as we have seen in the movies, when a voice starts timing. After it reaches T 0, it is launched the rocket, on board of which are all the experimental modules. The rocket consists of several cylindrical modules, overlapping, and in each cylinder there is an experiment, in one of the cylinders there is also our experiment, that is, a 3D printer,” said Romică Stoica, on of the students that masterminded the 3D printer.
“With green we can see the LEDs, after that, with dark purple we have the mask, which lets the light pass only in the form of these samples that we printed in number of 24 in micro-gravity”. The ambitious project of the 8 students started 4 years ago, and there were no shortage of difficult moments.” said Adrian Şișman, another student in the project.
“In 2020, we were supposed to launch the rocket, it was the first scheduled launch of the rocket, we had to cancel it. The next time there was an event, a building caught fire in space, in the space center, and we had to again let’s postpone and last year the war came”, added Romică Stoica.
The students had a hard time to secure the necessary funds for the students to arrive in Sweden with their ambitious project. Romică Stoica, student revealed: “We did various campaigns, including for Christmas we made snowflakes, for Martișor we made butterflies with a galaxy on them”.
The printer was sent into space on April 1, at 7:20 a.m. Romanian time.
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