The Future of Manufacturing Might Be in Space

Jessica Frick wants to build furnaces successful space. Her company, California-based Astral Materials, is designing machines that tin turn valuable materials successful orbit that could beryllium utilized successful medicine, semiconductors, and more. Or, arsenic she puts it, “We’re building a container that makes money successful space.”

Scientists person agelong suggested that nan microgravity situation of Earth’s orbit could alteration nan accumulation of higher-quality products than it is imaginable to make connected Earth. Astronauts experimented pinch crystals—a important constituent of physics circuitry—as early arsenic 1973, connected NASA’s Skylab abstraction station. But advancement was slow. For decades, in-space manufacturing has been experimental alternatively than commercial.

That is each group to change. A big of caller companies for illustration Astral are making usage of nan little costs of launching into space, coupled pinch emerging ways to return things to Earth, to reignite in-space manufacturing. The section is getting “massively” busier, says Mike Curtis-Rouse, caput of in-orbit servicing, assembly, and manufacturing astatine nan UK-based investigation statement Satellite Applications Catapult. He adds that by 2035 “the anticipation is that nan world abstraction system is going to beryllium a multitrillion-dollar industry, of which in-space manufacturing is astir apt successful nan region of astir $100 billion.”

At its simplest, in-space manufacturing refers to thing made successful abstraction that tin past beryllium utilized connected Earth aliases successful abstraction itself. The absence of gravity allows for unsocial manufacturing processes that cannot beryllium replicated connected Earth, acknowledgment to nan absorbing physics of near-weightlessness.

One specified process is crystal growth—in particular, producing seed crystals, which play a captious domiciled successful semiconductor manufacturing. On Earth, engineers return a high-purity, small, silicon seed crystal and dip it into molten silicon to create a larger crystal of high-quality silicon that tin beryllium sliced into wafers and utilized successful electronics. But nan effect of gravity connected nan maturation process tin present impurities. “Silicon now has an unsolvable problem,” says Joshua Western, CEO of UK institution Space Forge. “We fundamentally can’t get it immoderate purer.”

Growing these seed crystals successful abstraction could lead to overmuch much axenic wafers, says Western: “You tin almost property nan reset fastener connected what we deliberation is nan limit of a semiconductor.”

Frick’s institution Astral plans to do this pinch a mini fridge-sized furnace that reaches temperatures of astir 1,500 degrees Celsius (2,700 degrees Fahrenheit). The applications of crystal maturation are not conscionable constricted to semiconductors but could besides lead to higher value pharmaceuticals and different materials subject breakthroughs.

Other products made successful abstraction could beryllium produced pinch akin benefits. In January, China announced it had made a groundbreaking caller metallic alloy connected its Tiangong abstraction position that was overmuch lighter and stronger than comparable alloys connected Earth. And nan unsocial situation of debased gravity tin connection caller possibilities successful aesculapian research. “When you unopen disconnected gravity, you’re capable to fabricate thing for illustration an organ,” says Mike Gold, nan president of civilian and world abstraction business astatine Redwire, a Florida-based institution that has experimented pinch in-space manufacturing connected nan International Space Station for years. “If you effort to do this connected Earth, it would beryllium squished.”