TESS Exoplanet Surveyor Spacecraft

The Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) is searching our universe for exoplanets. Given it's a two year mission to monitor more than 200,000 stars, you'd be crazy to let it work away without having your own model of the spacecraft on your desk! I mean, what if NASA drops by for some advice and you just have a blank spot where your TESS should be?

I saw a 3D model on the NASA website – you can look at it here. But as becomes quickly apparent when inspecting their STL files, it is not filament-based 3D-printer friendly, and would be a big problem on typical home FDM printers. There are many too-tiny geometries, the mesh has substantial problems in many places, and many supports would be required to render various elements. I'm not sure how they printed their sample - presumably they used an SLS or SLA machine. Presumably they're advocating sending it to an online shop? Even then some elements would be a problem. But it was a nice reference design to look at as a informational supplement to the actual craft photos.

Rather than tackle the chore of evolving the NASA design, I decided to design a new model from scratch. Mostly I used publicity photos to guide me on the shapes and locations of the various instruments, as I built up the model from fundamental shapes. A key goal is avoiding the need for supports whenever possible.

There is always a bit of artistic license required to suggest the instruments whose intricate details would never print well at a desk-friendly scale. The result seem to be nicely printable now, based on my test prints. My model lets you print on most filament-based 3D printers and assemble easily.

As usual, I have designed-in my attractive display stand. The mounting point on the craft body of course isn't there in the real thing. ;)

All the required STL files are here. I provided two versions of that antenna to play with. I find that a one-piece print of dish-shapes often have a rough underside where supports are required (that face is usually hidden, so prob doesn't matter much). You can alternatively print the two-piece SPLIT version, and glue the halves together. Otherwise, just use supports (concentric is best) and print the one-piece version. None of the other pieces require supports – just the dish antenna in one-piece configuration.

I prefer hot-glue usually for assembly of these things. Careful though, as it solidifies quickly – you need to work fast after glue is applied to a part. The whole thing will hold together without any glue - as will the stand. If it's going to get handled though, you'll want some glue here and there.

Makers who liked this also liked some of my other 3D-printer friendly spacecraft :) See…

my Cassini model here
or my New Horizons model here

other options include Sputnik and OSIRIS-REx.