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FEATURE MATERIALS IN DESIGN & PROTOTYPING Autonomous electric


vehicle Olli 2.0 includes 3D printed parts


manufactured by CRP


Technology in Windform composite materials


MATERIAL MATTERS IN DESIGN Windform composite materials from CRP Technology are enabling the


development of 3D printed parts that suit the application demands – from components on electric vehicles to the 3D printed deployers that successfully launched PocketQube’s from SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket


SpaceX’s small satellite rideshare service, and comprised a total of 105 small satellites. During the mission, 13 PocketQube satellites were launched from SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket. These nanosatellites had been integrated in five Alba deployers, which were entirely 3D printed by CRP Technology in Windform XT 2.0 Carbon fibre filled composite material. Once they had separated from Falcon 9, the


O


deployers started launching the PocketQubes into orbit and these began to send signals back to the earth.


n Thursday 13 January at 3.25pm (GMT), Alba Orbital’s space mission launched from Cape Canaveral, as part of


LAUNCHING INTO SPACE The 13 PocketQube spacecrafts, which were integrated into the five 3D printed AlbaPods v.2 deployers, represented Alba Orbital’s biggest cluster to date. This has been the third dedicated launch for SpaceX’s small satellite rideshare service, which aims to give microsatellites and CubeSats a more affordable ride into orbit. The Transporter-3 mission flew southeast


from Cape Canaveral, then turned south to track parallel to Florida’s east coast to deliver the Falcon 9 rocket’s 105 satellite passengers into a roughly 326-mile-high polar sun-synchronous orbit. Engineer Franco Cevolini, CEO


and CTO at CRP Technology, commented: “Congratulations to Alba Orbital and to all the teams flown with them, for all their hard work. On Thursday 13th January 2022 it was a new milestone in the nanosatellites arena. We


are very proud of being a supplier of materials and


technology that are integration and space-proven! The successful mission demonstrates once again the extreme value of Windform for highly performance, heavy duty and mission-


One of the 3D printed AlbaPods 48 DESIGN SOLUTIONS MARCH 2022


critical, applications. “SpaceX’s Transporter-3 mission using the Falcon 9 rocket and the related Alba Orbital’s


‘Alba Cluster 3 & 4’ mission – consisting of the integration of the 13 PocketQubes into five of the 3D printed deployers as preparation for the launch – represents not just a one-time prototype process, but an actual sector of work for both CRP Technology and the US-based partner, CRP USA,” he added.


THE POCKETQUBES Four out of the 13 PocketQubes that participated in the mission, marked a ‘first’: • UNICORN-2A, 2D & 2E are Alba Orbital’s first Earth Observation satellites designed to provide the highest resolution dataset of the earth at night.


• 1p ‘PION-BR1’ is the first satellite to be developed by a Brazilian start-up.


• 1p ‘GRIZU-263a’ is Turkey’s first ever pico- satellite to be launched in-orbit. It was designed and built by Turkish student team Grizu-263 Uzay Takimi.


• ‘TARTAN-ARTIBEUS -1’ is the first intermittent, orbital edge computing nanosatellite that operates with no batteries aboard the SpaceX Falcon-9 Transporter-3 mission. This open source project was developed at Carnegie Mellon University. The other PocketQubes integrated in Alba’s 3D printed deployers were: • ‘MDQube-SAT1’, an Argentinian 2p PocketQube developed by 'classroom turned space start-up’ Innova Space, carrying out an IoT mission. • ‘UNICORN-1’, another Alba built 2p


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