Role in Scientific Discovery

This area provides new capabilities and approaches for science experiments, technology development, and space exploration.

 

Benefit to JPL Mission

Advanced manufacturing, design, and materials enable new design approaches and reduces mass and power consumption, thereby reducing mission cost. AM is necessary for the production of multi-functional structures in situ.

 

Challenges

The current state of advanced manufacturing, design, and materials faces limitations in computing capability and testing and integration challenges. Future mission architectures demand more science capability per mass than traditional manufacturing, design, and materials can achieve.

 

 

Solutions

• Smart Materials: hybrid manufacturing methods, multi-material printing, material property tailoring
• Advanced Design and Analysis: topology optimization, multi-physics modeling and simulation, concurrent and nonlinear design optimization

 

Read more about this topic in JPL's 2019 Strategic Technologies document.