NASA lab offers respirator designs for free
A California spacecraft laboratory has made its respirator designs available for free and signed up to the IP sharing scheme, Open COVID Pledge.
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena is owned by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and operated by the California Institute of Technology.
It’s known best for developing spacecraft used in NASA missions to Mars, as well as advanced telescopes and satellites.
In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, the lab has now used its expertise to develop three designs for 3D-printed respirators and made them available for free.
JPL has formally signed up to the Open COVID Pledge, a voluntary licensing initiative launched in March in order to facilitate access to IP that could be useful in fighting the disease.
In addition to the NASA lab, the pledge has attracted the support of major tech companies including Intel, Microsoft, HP, Facebook, and IBM, as well as other major corporations like Amazon.
JPL has uploaded the respirator designs to GitHub, a software hosting and development company owned by Microsoft.
Stressing that the devices had not been formally approved by medical institutions, JPL encouraged users to modify and improve the designs.
“These designs, instructions, STL files, and JPL's initial test data are released to Open Source with the hope that companies and individuals who have access to 3D printers, and who want to help, can print or create these for those who need them,” a JPL announcement said.
“We are purposefully not using materials in the normal medical supply chain as it should be kept free to create commercial and certified respirators,” it added.
JPL was also joined in supporting the Open COVID Pledge yesterday by US telecoms provider AT&T.
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