ESA Top Multimedia

The first metal 3D part ever created on orbit has landed on Earth. 

The sample was produced in ESA’s Metal 3D Printer on the International Space Station. Now, it’s on Earth for the first time, at ESA’s technical heart in the Netherlands (ESTEC). 

The printer, developed by Airbus and its partners, was installed in the Columbus module by ESA astronaut Andreas Mogensen during his Huginn mission in January 2024. In June, the facility succeeded in making its first print, a curvy line in the shape of an 'S’. In summer, the printer produced its first full sample, and then a second sample in December. 

This first sample will now be tested in the Materials and Electrical Components Laboratory at ESTEC and compared to samples printed on Earth to understand how microgravity affects the printing process. 

The second sample will be handed over to the Technical University of Denmark (DTU). 

While astronauts have operated plastic 3D printers on the International Space Station before, this marks the first successful metal printing on orbit. As missions venture farther from Earth, in-space manufacturing will be crucial for self-sufficiency, allowing astronauts to manufacture essential parts, repair equipment and create tools on demand, without relying on costly resupply missions. 

As part of a community effort, the Glacier Mass Balance Intercomparison Exercise, Glambie, has compiled all major studies using observations from a wealth of different techniques to provide an estimate of the world’s glacier mass change over the last two decades. The results, published in the journal Nature, show that ice melting from glaciers around the world is depleting regional freshwater resources and driving global sea levels to rise at ever-faster rates. The animation here illustrates the different observation methods used in the research, and Vatnajökull in Iceland as an example.

Read full story: Glacier melt intensifying freshwater loss and accelerating sea-level rise

The Copernicus Sentinel-4 mission, an ultraviolet, visible, near-infrared light spectrometer carried on the Meteosat Third Generation Sounder satellite in geostationary, provides hourly observations to monitor air quality over Europe. These hourly observations are set to make a breakthrough for air quality monitoring from space.

The animation shows how the mirror mechanism works to scan Earth’s atmosphere to provide critical data on the composition of the atmosphere at a spatial resolution of 8 km x 8 km.

Using data from satellite sensors such as Tropomi on Sentinel-5P and GOME-2 on MetOp along with forecast models, this animation shows concentrations of near-surface nitrogen dioxide every hour over Europe throughout November 2018. Urban and industrial areas are particularly polluted – concentrations over the Randstad area in the Netherlands often reaches 40 μg/m3, exceeding European air-quality standards. High values can also be seen in valleys near sources of pollution where there is little wind.

The Copernicus Sentinel-4 mission, an ultraviolet, visible, near-infrared light spectrometer carried on the Meteosat Third Generation Sounder satellite in geostationary, provides hourly observations to monitor air quality over Europe. These hourly observations are set to make a breakthrough for air quality monitoring from space.

ESA’s Earth Explorer Biomass is the first satellite to carry a P-band synthetic aperture radar in space to measure forest biomass and height, consistently across the globe and across different forest types. Thanks to the long 70 cm wavelength of P-band, the signal can penetrate through the forest canopy, allowing it to collect information on amounts of different parts of the forest, namely, tree trunks, branches and stems – which is where trees store most of their carbon.

Since carbon makes up roughly half the weight of wood, the mission is extremely important in the quest to reduce uncertainties about the role forests play in the global carbon cycle and in our climate system.