The European Space Agency (ESA) is Europe’s gateway to space. Its mission is to shape the development of Europe’s space capability and ensure that investment in space continues to deliver benefits to the citizens of Europe and the world.
Find out more about space activities in our 23 Member States, and understand how ESA works together with their national agencies, institutions and organisations.
Exploring our Solar System and unlocking the secrets of the Universe
Go to topicProtecting life and infrastructure on Earth and in orbit
Go to topicUsing space to benefit citizens and meet future challenges on Earth
Go to topicMaking space accessible and developing the technologies for the future
Go to topicThank you for liking
You have already liked this page, you can only like it once!
Testing a 3D printer that can print all available thermoplastics and in particular engineering hard plastics such as ‘PEEK’.
PEEK, short for Polyether ether ketone, is a thermoplastic that has very robust mechanical properties in terms of strength, stability, wear and temperature resistance – so strong in fact that PEEK parts can actually do comparable jobs to some metal parts.
This opens up the prospect of producing customised 3D-printed parts that can actually stand up to the extreme conditions encountered in space. Up until now plastic 3D printers have used much weaker plastics, such as ABS and PLA, usually employed for making toys or parts with non-structural functionality. The PEEK 3D printer at ESA’s Materials and Electrical Components Laboratory is only the second ever built, manufactured by a small German company called Indmatec. For more information watch the full video.