ThinkOrbital Flight-1: the Dawn of Autonomous Welding in Space

In a press release of May 17, 2024, ThinkOrbital revealed they achieved most of the objectives of their first space mission, Flight-1. The Lafayette, Colorado-based company sent their electronic beam welder, as a special payload, on board a SpaceX Falcon 9 booster launched on May 6, 2024, as part of the Starlink Group 6-57 mission.

🚀✨ Exciting News Alert! ThinkOrbital Soars to New Heights with Flight-1 Success!

✨🚀We are thrilled to announce that we've achieved the majority of our Flight-1 objectives, marking a significant leap forward in space innovation!

🌌 From the ground-breaking first-ever… pic.twitter.com/vBHaL2HVLS
— ThinkOrbital (@ThinkOrbital) May 17, 2024

Their first autonomous in-space welding system conducted welding tests during the suborbital flight and returned to the ground with the welding samples, attached to the Falcon 9 B1069 booster.

Thanks to their collaboration with NASA and ESA, the space agencies’ experts will analyze the recovered samples to determine how well the welding operated, providing valuable feedback for the next missions.

The challenge of welding in space

Generally, the quality of a weld depends on the distribution of temperatures and the distribution of the melted material, which are difficult to control in space due to the microgravity and vacuum conditions. It is also crucial to choose the correct welding technique since the use of gasses or high levels of energy can be a constraint in space.

In 1969, the Soviets ran the first experiments of in-space welding during the Soyuz 6 mission. The cosmonaut Valery Kubasov tried different techniques using the Vulkan Furnace device.

*Welding unit Vulkan in the Museum of the PWI. Credits: Oleh Strelko, State University of Infrastructure and Technologies, Kyiv, Ukraine*

For their space welder, ThinkOrbital chose the electronic beam technology, capable of strong welds, small heated zones, and high energy efficiency. It needs vacuum environments to function, so it is one of the best choices to weld directly in space.

ThinkOrbital, a company dedicated to in-space construction

ThinkOrbital mission is to “accelerate the accessibility and commercialization of cislunar space through cost-effective, pressurizable, scalable and multi-purpose infrastructure.” To fulfill this purpose, they designed a new space infrastructure, the ThinkPlatform, which will be launched disassembled. It will be built autonomously by the company Toolkit system, a robotic arm equipped with different tools for welding, cutting, additive manufacturing, and inspection at various wavelengths.

Like a soccer ball, the spherical habitat is assembled starting from its pentagonal and hexagonal components, forming the outer shell. This design allows ThinkPlatform to have various configurations:

attached to an existing space station (ThinkPlatform-1),
fly as a stand-alone spacecraft (ThinkPlatform-2),
form a stand-alone space station (ThinkPlatform-3),
used as a module for a space hub (ThinkPlatform-4).

*A render of ThinkPlatform-3 docked with Starship. Credits: ThinkOrbital*

The company is actively collaborating with NASA to develop ThinkPlatform, under the Commercial Space Capabilities-2 initiative (CCSC-2). They aim to test and sell their Toolkit system by 2025 or 2026 and to launch and build in space ThinkPlatform-1 by 2027 or 2028.