How would a 3-D printer work in the microgravity of suborbital space after surviving a jarring ride 100 miles above the earth? A group of Virginia Tech College of Engineering students answered that after a launch at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility. The use of a 3-D printer in space is not new. A 3-D printer is on the International Space Station. But this is the first time such a printer was used on an unmanned rocket during flight, said Virginia Tech RockSat-X team leader Sebastian Welsh of Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania, and senior in the department of computer science.
![Virginia Tech’s RockSat-X team includes (left to right) Seth Austin, Sebastian Welsh, and John Mulvaney, all of the College of Engineering.](https://wordpress.cs.vt.edu/csblog/wp-content/uploads/sites/6/2015/08/teamuse.jpg)