At IES Ramón Menéndez Pidal we have opened a “Classroom of the Future” this school year, whose activities include 3D printing. We wondered what happens to materials made with a 3D printer on a space mission. With our project we will verify how the conditions of the stratosphere (temperature, pressure, humidity, UV radiation and cosmic radiation) affect the mechanical properties of printing materials. That way we will be able to determine whether the materials are suitable for manufacturing parts with this technology in the aerospace industry. To do so we will fly a series of parts made of different materials and keep identical parts on the ground. Afterwards, in the technology workshop, we will check the compressive and impact resistance of all of them through scientific tests, using instruments designed and built by the students, and compare them to see whether these properties have changed.
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