Orbital Matter says it printed the first rigid beam in open space

Orbital Matter said its Replicator 2 satellite produced a 50-centimeter rigid beam in the vacuum of space, which the company described as a first for a free-flying spacecraft orbiting Earth. The Warsaw- and Berlin-based company, founded in 2022 by Jakub Stojek and Robert Ihnatisin, launched Replicator 2 on July 7, 2026, with four printers; an earlier printer failed, while another deployed a flexible solar array. Its printer pushes out resin that ultraviolet light hardens into a cylinder without heating, a method aimed at enabling larger in-orbit structures. In 2023, NASA-supported Redwire made similar beams in an Earth vacuum chamber but not in space.