You know how on Star Trek,
people can just walk up to a machine and manufacture
whatever they need?
Well, we’re trying to do that for real-life
space travel, too,
because it’s expensive to send everything
you could possibly need into space.
It’s so much easier to just make tools and
supplies on demand.
Pretty soon, we might even be able to 3D print
entire organs in space.
And then bring them back down to make life
better here on Earth.
In June, three tech companies tested a device
meant 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 creates
a few seconds of weightlessness at a time
and it printed some small bits of heart and
blood vessel tissue.
The International Space Station already has
its own working 3D printer for plastic
aka the closest thing we have to a Star Trek
replicator in real life.
If they really needed to, astronauts could
print out almost anything,
as long as it’s meant to be made of plastic
and fits within the size constraints of the printer.
And Earth-based space agencies can send designs
to the station to print,
without having to send a physical object up
on a rocket.
But the 3D printing approach isn’t just
for making plastic tools.
Scientists and doctors are trying to develop
a way to manufacture human organs, too,
out of adult stem cells -- the cells whose
job it is to repair damaged tissue.
If we could 3D print organs, that could save
a lot more lives than our current system,
which relies on finding an organ donor that’s
a match.
Since 3D printed organs would be made from
the patient’s own cells,
they would definitely be a match.
And they’d be available on demand. They
could even be customized to fit.
The printer that was tested last month can’t
print 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 support
material.
It prints the bioink in a detailed pattern
that tries to mimic the natural structure
of the tissue.
The support material can be made of different
substances,
but its job is to form a solid structure that
encourages the cells to grow.
And it turns out that it’s a lot easier
to print cells in space,
because the bioink just needs less junk in
it.
On Earth, bioink needs to be very thick to
support the cells.
The support material causes a lot of stress
on the cells during the printing process.
And you can’t print an organ with dead cells.
In space, printers can use a thinner bioink
and a finer printer tip.
The finer printer tip allows them to place
individual cells more precisely.
And the thinner ink is easier on the cells.
The cells can then eventually build their
own supports
to stabilize the printed structure so it can
be brought back to Earth.
Right now, this technology can make little
bits and pieces of tissue, like grafts,
and the companies plan to make a scaled-down
version of the device
to eventually fly on the International Space
Station.
Building a functional organ, with blood vessels
and 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 space
could both improve healthcare here on Earth,
and help us explore the final frontier.
But even relatively close to home, there are
still new things to discover.
Researchers working with the Canada-France-Hawaii
Telescope in Hawaii
have spotted what seems to be a new dwarf
planet
a small, icy world similar to Pluto, called
2015 RR245.
Another catchy name from the scientists studying
planets.
The solar system beyond Neptune, a region
called the Kuiper belt, is full of these icy rocks.
This is not the hypothetical ninth planet
that 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 700
kilometers across,
which would put it in the top 20 biggest objects
in the Kuiper.
It has an incredibly lopsided orbit around
the Sun
it’s 34 times the distance from Earth to
the 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 sure
if 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 for
its gravity to pull it into a spherical shape.
But the object is bigger than Mimas, one of
Saturn’s moons.
Since Mimas is big enough to be round, this
even-bigger object is probably round, too.
And there’s still so much of the Kuiper
belt that we haven’t detected yet!
So there are probably tons of dwarf planets
still 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 discovering
many more dwarf planets until new,
better telescopes get fired up in a decade
or so.
Thanks for watching this episode of SciShow
Space News,
and thanks especially to all of our patrons
on Patreon who help make this show possible.
If you want to help us keep making episodes
like this, you can go to patreon.com/scishow.
And don’t forget to go to youtube.com/scishowspace
and subscribe!
