Physics-Informed-AI Enabled Smart Electrospinning of Nanofiber Membranes Towards In-Space Manufacturing

Overview: With the growing and emerging NASA interests in deep space exploration (e.g., the exciting launch of Artemis I rocket on November 16 of 2022 and subsequent Artemis missions to land humans on the Moon, as well as NASA’s next-stage vision to land on Mars), In-Space Manufacturing (ISM) beyond the earth is of immediate need and is extremely essential to enable flexible on-demand manufacturing and mission sustainability. Most existing ISM techniques are rooted in Additive Manufacturing (AM), which: (1) often suffers from the impact of low/micro-gravity environments in space; and (2) mostly focuses on printing macroscale solid parts, while not being effective to print nanostructured thin parts like functional nanofiber membranes. To overcome challenges of AM, this project pioneers a novel ISM paradigm via creating a physics-informed-AI enabled compact electrospinning (PEACE) system for sustainable and scalable production of high-performance functional nanofiber membranes (FNM), and explore/demonstrate its potential towards future ISM. Compared with AM, this electrospinning-based manufacturing paradigm: (1) is driven by electric forces and does not rely on gravity, thereby having promising potential for ISM; and (2) fabricates nanostructured thin parts like functional membranes in space, which complements AM that prints macroscale solid parts. More specifically, two fundamental research questions will be answered to demonstrate the ISM potential via PEACE: (1) how does the electrospinning system work under space conditions (i.e., low/micro-gravity); and (2) how to optimize the entire electrospinning process towards scalable and high-performance FNM fabrication under a small size of training data, since material resources in space are often limited and expensive. The project objective will be achieved via close multi-institutional partnerships among three Kansas Universities (Wichita State University, Kansas State University, and the University of Kansas), three NASA research centers (NASA Marshall Space Flight Center that directly leads the national ISM program, NASA Ames Research Center, and NASA Glenn Research Center), two government agencies (Argonne National Laboratory, Applied Physics Laboratory), and three business/industry partners with a strong economic footprint in Kansas (Spirit AeroSystems, Meta Platforms Inc., and HCI Energy) Impact: The proposed innovative PEACE system will facilitate NASA’s manufacturing paradigm shift from “factories on earth” to “factories in space,” thereby enabling a series of future complex and long-duration deep space missions that are previously impossible. This project opens up a new electrospinning-driven avenue towards future ISM, which complements the current AM pathway. Project outcomes will create immense scientific value and economic benefit to both NASA and Kansas. Specifically, (1) on the NASA side, we directly target the need of NASA’s ISM program to explore technologies and economic processes that enable sustainable on-demand manufacturing for future long-duration space missions on the International Space Station (ISS), Moon and Mars; (2) on the Kansas side, Wichita has earned reputation as the “Air Capital of the World” since 1928 and has bases of multiple leading aircraft/aerospace industries. Project success will enable Wichita and Kansas to develop a new research enterprise directed toward long-term, self-sustaining, nationally-competitive aerospace research capabilities on ISM, which contributes to Kansas’s aerospace economy and expand the nation's base for aerospace research and development. A broad class of research-integrated educational initiatives with a wide range of dissemination and outreach activities will attract students to pursue data science and advanced manufacturing studies, research and careers, especially female and underrepresented minority groups.

This is a mature technology (TRL 7+) — the realistic path in is usually NASA's Technology Transfer Program: licensing an existing NASA patent, or a Space Act Agreement to use NASA facilities/expertise directly. NASA also runs a startup licensing program with no upfront fee for companies formed to commercialize a specific NASA technology.

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