ISMAC: Marshall Space Flight Center’s In-Space Manufacturing Advancement Center

The In-Space Manufacturing Advancement Center (ISMAC) is NASA Marshall Space Flight Center Materials and Processes Laboratory’s one-stop shop for tackling the difficulties of manufacturing in space. The ISMAC mission is to facilitate in-space manufacturing development through shared resources, networking, and communication; and the vision is to overcome all barriers to development of in-space manufacturing. In this case, the definition of “in-space manufacturing" is any manufacturing activities taking place above the Earth’s atmosphere. In the near term this includes Earth orbit manufacturing for use in Earth orbit as well as use on the Earth. This is expected to grow in the medium-term to include Lunar manufacturing and orbital manufacturing for Lunar use, as well as deep-space transit manufacturing for use on the way to Mars and other deep-space destinations. In the long-term, this is expected to include Martian manufacturing for Martian and deep space use, as well as begin to leverage resources found not just in planetary destinations, but also in trojan asteroids, “space junk”, and other atypical sources. Capabilities and results are continually growing, but currently include robotic rover test beds, robotic arms, regolith laser powder bed fusion (L-PBF), microgravity simulation, laser manufacturing technologies, 3D-scanning and digital twins development, among others.