NASA is no stranger to the benefits of 3D printing. America’s space agency has used the technology for hundreds of projects from creating  functional “Space Fabric” using metal 3D printing to developing curiosity rovers (which they’ve also released the files for.)

Now, the company’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is working with American multinational software corporation, Autodesk, to design an interplanetary lander which is futuristic in appearance but also more energy and cost efficient than previous designs.

However, initially, JPL wasn’t convinced by how 3D modeling could aid the design of modern spacecraft. But, Mark Davis, Autodesk’s senior director of industry research, convinced the JPL team by explaining how such use of technology could improve performance by 30%.

“They were clear that they weren’t interested in incremental gains: if they were only able to improve performance by 10%, they basically weren’t interested. If we could deliver software tools to help them achieve a performance improvement of 30% or more, then we had their attention. This project demonstrates that Autodesk technologies may deliver mass savings at this level,” says Davis.

After much hard work designing the lander, the companies recently showcased their work at the Autodesk University summit in Las Vegas. However, sadly, a full-sized interplanetary lander wasn’t on display but rather a scale model which measured 1 meter tall and 2.5 meters wide.