ST. LOUIS COUNTY, Mo. – A cube from space made its way back to Earth, putting a hypothesis to the test for two Lindbergh High School students.
“We were inspired by this one story of this astronaut who used duct tape to fix his equipment,” Lindbergh student Biraj Pokhrel said. “And we were just thinking like, what else could we have on there to make sure they quickly have access to equipment.”
That’s why Pokhrel and Dylan Rice, now juniors, decided to send different types of 3D printer plastic into space to see what impacts space travel would have on the materials.
Their long wait to see the results is finally over.
The mass of printer plastic chips seems unchanged from before their long flight. And the preliminary results for these two young researchers are positive.
“So far just from looking at them I think that the results are good because it hasn’t changed a lot,” Biraj said. “That means that space flight and just the general atmosphere of space won’t really effect the 3D plastics. So, hopefully, we will be able to use these 3D plastics in space.”
“We’ll have to test for malleability and stuff because it did seem a little bendy but I haven’t tested out the control tests, so I don’t know if it’s the same or not,” Rice said.
A lot of long hours spent on this experiment have finally paid off and lifelong memories made that you won’t find in a textbook.