Case Study: Lockheed Martin’s Advanced Technology Center achieves rapid, cost‑effective prototyping for revolutionary space telescopes with MakerBot

How Lockheed Martin’s Engineers Rely on MakerBot’s Professional Solutions to Efficiently and Cost-Effectively Develop Radical New Designs for Space Telescopes

Lockheed Martin’s Advanced Technology Center (ATC) was tapped by DARPA to reinvent space telescope optics with a lighter, cheaper, and more adaptable design called SPIDER. To develop the condensed interferometric optics and iterate array geometries quickly and securely, the ATC relied on MakerBot professional solutions—including MakerBot Desktop/Print software, Replicator and Replicator Mini+ printers, and MakerBot filaments like Tough PLA and True Black PLA—for rapid, in‑house prototyping.

MakerBot’s 3D printers and materials let the ATC print functional prototypes and tooling on demand, shorten iteration cycles from weeks to hours, and avoid costly outsourced quotes and long lead times. Using MakerBot, engineers produced as many as 14 design iterations in a single day, ran printers continuously for rapid refinement, printed replacement nose cones in the field, and supported testing that underpins SPIDER’s 10–100× reductions in size, weight, and power for optics—demonstrating measurable time and cost savings while accelerating discovery.

Lockheed Martin’s Advanced Technology Center

Guy Chriqui

Senior Research Engineer