Elements of a minisatellite engineered by the Tomsk Polytechnical University will be printed on a 3D printer, the director of the High Tech Physics Institute Alexey Yakovlev reported to TASS.

"The satellite, including its framework, will be printed on a 3D printer in the  Tomsk Polytechnical University. We are the first to have applied 3D printer for engineering spacecrafts", - Mr. Yakovlev said.

He specified that one of the tasks for the satellite is to test new materials developed by scientists of the TPU and the Institute of Physics of Durability and Materials Science of the Siberian Branch of RAS (Tomsk). Thus, the case of the device will be made of special plastic, and the heat-insulating case of the battery block will be ceramic. Both elements of the satellite will be made by means of the 3D printer.

Approbation of mechanisms of communicating with the Earth for  transferring information from various sensors installed on the device will become another important task.

It was reported earlier that the satellite of the Tomsk Polytechnic University will be the first of Russian group of CubeSats, i.e. midget satellites, which is planned to be put into the orbit in the future.

The Tomsk Polytechnical University coordinates the work of a consortium of ten scientific organizations of Russia, which are engaged in creating groups of small robotized space aircrafts that weigh from 1,5 to 20 kg. Scientists believe that in the long term such satellites united into groups will be able to independently repair each other right in the orbit and jointly carry out various tasks.