We have a winner for the most interesting email attachment of 2014!NASA recently provided the astronauts currently aboard the International Space Station (ISS) with a new tool via little more than a standard email. The attachment was actually instructions for a special 3D printer the astronauts have thanks to a delivery from a SpaceX Dragon capsule back in September. The printer is specially made to work in low gravity, and the emailed instructions included the design for a socket wrench that was specifically needed.

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As for whatever task the tool will be used for, there's little doubt that a metal wrench would be preferable to one made of plastic. But the advantages of time and cost thanks to the 3D printing make that option far more useful. If astronauts discover they need something during a mission that they don't already have, it would take months of mission planning to have a shipment delivered into space, not to mention the costs involved. Thanks to load of plastic filament that arrived with the printer, any number of objects can be created on the fly, and as Wilmore said, he got what he needed with almost no wait.