Made In Space keeps notching off-Earth manufacturing milestones.

The Florida-based company just built its first ceramic part in orbit, 3D printing a single-piece turbine "blisk" (short for "bladed disk") on board the International Space Station (ISS).

"This is an exciting milestone for space-enabled manufacturing and signals the potential for new markets that could spur commercial activity in low Earth orbit," Made In Space president Tom Campbell said in a statement last week. 

The blisk and some simpler test objects were fabricated by Made In Space's Ceramic Manufacturing Module (CMM), which arrived at the space station aboard Northrop Grumman's robotic Cygnus cargo vehicle in October. 

The microwave-sized CMM makes parts via "stereolithography," which uses an ultraviolet (UV) laser and UV-curable resin. This 3D-printing technique can make complex objects such as turbine blisks with a high degree of accuracy, Made In Space representatives said.

The CMM is a pathfinder, a machine designed to demonstrate that intricate and economically important ceramic components can be made in microgravity for use here on Earth. And Made In Space thinks there's good reason to take the manufacture of such objects off the planet.

"Manufacturing turbine components in microgravity could produce parts with better performance, including higher strength and lower residual stress, due to a reduction in defects caused by gravity, such as sedimentation and composition gradients," company representatives wrote in a description of the CMM this past September. "This technology demonstrates potential use of the space station for unique manufacturing capabilities which could increase commercial utilization of ISS."