Professor develops way to build structures in space


Behrokh Khoshnevis, a professor in industrial and systems engineering at USC Viterbi School of Engineering, is changing the way that scientists look at building on the moon and beyond.

Khoshnevis is the developer of a process called Selective Separation Sintering, which enables the construction of structures in space from the materials available in space. The invention recently won first place in the NASA In-Situ Materials Challenge for creating structures in space from lunar and Martian materials.

The invention will benefit space agencies by saving the time and cost involved with sending the materials to space.

SSS, which took Khoshnevis seven years to develop, follows Khoshnevis’ previous invention, Contour Crafting, which is a 3-D printing process that also won the NASA Prize in 2014. Contour Crafting is an extrusion-based process more suitable for building large structures while SSS is a powder-based method suitable for building small-scale objects such as metallic parts, tiles and bricks.

SSS is the first process which will be able to work in zero gravity. Khoshnevis said it provides more speed, accuracy and independence from expensive technologies like lasers, is less complex and has high potential for space and planetary use.

Graduate students Jing Zhang, Behnam Zahiri and Xiao Yuan worked under Khoshnevis for his research. Along with his team, Khoshnevis has used this process to successfully develop tiles that can withstand the high pressure and temperature of landing spacecrafts.

“Every idea takes a lot of things and many manufacturing processes to form,” Khoshnevis said.

The NASA competition involved inventing ways to utilize the materials found on the moon and Mars to construct objects needed for future space missions. Khoshnevis and his team used SSS to construct objects using synthetic materials developed by the Johnson Space Center, which are the same as the materials found on Mars and the moon.

Khoshnevis received his B.S. in industrial engineering from Sharif University of Technology, Iran and received his M.S. and Ph.D. in industrial engineering and management from Oklahoma State University. He is a Dean’s Professor of Industrial & Systems Engineering, Aerospace & Mechanical Engineering, Astronautics Engineering, Biomedical Engineering and Civil & Environmental Engineering and is the director of the Center for Rapid Automated Fabrication Technologies (CRAFT) at USC.

Khoshnevis believes that this technique will make future space endeavors more cost-effective and efficient. Khoshnevis said that the space industry is rapidly evolving and that he’s excited to be a part of it.

“People think that these ideas are far-off and kind of fanciful and are not going to happen soon, but the reality is different,” Khoshnevis said. “Space industry is moving very fast and the future is going to be even more exciting.”

Khoshnevis and his team plan to further test the technique in vacuum conditions using the facilities at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center and USC’s Astronautics Rocket Lab.