The Ingredients For Commercial In-Space Manufacturing

For Use Back On Earth

Two historic milestones in the commercialization of space occurred last week: (1) the first successful private Moon landing by Intuitive Machines, and (2) the first commercial low-cost Earth return conducted by Varda Space Industries. I will eventually be posting about both, but for this post, I’m focusing on the latter.

A high-level in-space manufacturing for terrestrial use landscape. This does not include all companies operating in, or relevant to, in-space manufacturing. Comment below with any companies that are missing from this figure.

Varda is a California-based startup at the bleeding edge of in-space manufacturing for terrestrial applications.  One of the key enablers for this emerging market area is low-cost Earth return capabilities. Last week, Varda completed the first demonstration of commercial low-cost Earth return with the support of their partner Rocket Lab with the landing of their spacecraft in the Utah desert. Prior to this demonstration, commercial Earth return capabilities were limited to human-rated vehicles, which are far more expensive than the vehicle returned by Varda last week. The introduction of commercial low-cost Earth return capabilities, marks a tipping point for the emerging in-space manufacturing market.

The concept of in-space manufacturing for terrestrial applications has been around for a long time, but economic viability has been the limiting factor. However, the economics are changing due to a combination of lowering launch costs, emerging low-cost Earth return capabilities, commercial in-space infrastructure and platforms on the horizon, a wide array of potential applications and use cases, and the advancement of enabling technologies in other market areas. Here’s the current status and future trajectory of these essential ingredients for economically viable in-space manufacturing:

Low-Cost Launch

Lower launch costs, pioneered by SpaceX, have been a major catalyst for the explosive growth in commercial space that has occurred over the past 15 years. These changes in launch have already played a major role in making in-space manufacturing more economically viable. However, the low-cost launch ecosystem is poised to evolve dramatically over the next 2-3 years, due to the slew of launch vehicles across all payload mass classes that are expected to become operational. This will expand the availability and cadence of low-cost launch opportunities, and lower launch costs further.

This increase in space access and decrease in the cost of it, bodes well for in-space manufacturing. In addition to making it easier to launch infrastructure and platforms needed for in-space manufacturing, it will also decrease the costs of resupplying the raw materials needed for the manufacturing applications. In the near term, in-space manufacturing will leverage terrestrially sourced raw materials. However, in the long term, raw materials for in-space manufacturing may also be sourced from recycling of on-orbit objects, space debris, or resources from other celestial bodies.

Low-Cost Earth Return

While Earth return capabilities are not a necessity for all forms of in-space manufacturing (as space-based applications exist), in-space manufacturing for terrestrial application does require it. Both human-rated and robotic Earth return capabilities have been around for many decades, both initially emerged in the 1960s. However, the commercialization of these capabilities is much more recent. NASA’s Commercial Crew and Cargo programs were pivotal in instigating the commercialization of the human-rated Earth return capabilities.¹ These human-rated Earth return capabilities are already playing an important role in the development of in-space manufacturing and will continue to do so.

However, if in-space manufacturing for terrestrial applications is to reach its full potential, it cannot be solely reliant on human-rated systems, which fly far less frequently than other vehicles. Thus, low-cost Earth return capabilities will play a key role in the market expansion of in-space manufacturing for terrestrial applications. As previously stated, Varda and Rocket Lab completed the first commercial demonstration of low-cost Earth return. Other companies developing low-cost Earth return capabilities include Stoke Space, Outpost, Inversion, and SpaceWorks.²

In-Space Infrastructure and Platforms

Manufacturing facilities in space are another essential ingredient. In the same way that access to and from space, involves both human-rated and robotic systems, space infrastructure and platforms for in-space manufacturing will also involve a combination of both.

Historically, demonstrations of in-space manufacturing have occurred on the International Space Station (ISS), a human-rated system. There are several commercial space stations in development, by companies and consortium, including Axiom Space, Orbital Reef (Blue Origin, Sierra Space, Boeing, and Redwire), Starlab (Voyager Space, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, and Airbus), Vast, and Gravitics that will eventually fill the void when the ISS is retired. In addition, there is an ecosystem of companies that provide access to this current and planned space infrastructure through compatible standardized platforms and services, which includes Nanoracks (part of Voyager Space), Space Tango, SpaceBD, SpacePharma and Space Cargo Unlimited.

Beyond the human-rated systems, robotics systems are also emerging as important infrastructure and platforms for the future of in-space manufacturing. Varda’s recent mission was the first demonstration of such a platform, and several other companies, such as GravityLab, SpacePharma, and Odyssey Spaceworks, are also actively developing capabilities for robotic in-space manufacturing or experimentation for informing future in-space manufacturing.

Applications and Use Cases

None of the aforementioned space systems matter without commercially viable applications and use cases for in-space manufacturing. Luckily, there are many at various stages of development. It is the microgravity environment of space that makes in-space manufacturing advantageous. The properties and behaviors of materials and other substances are altered by microgravity, enabling different results from the manipulation of those substances, that are not possible on Earth. The ISS National Lab, which has facilitated much of the research into these use cases, cites advanced materials, crystal growth, thin-layer deposition, tissue engineering, regenerative medicine, and quantum technologies as areas of high potential.

However, many companies are beginning to move beyond the research phase and into commercialization. For instance, Lambda Vision is manufacturing retinal implants in space. Flawless Photonics recently announced it has manufactured commercial scale ZBLAN, an optical material, on the ISS. Redwire has demonstrated bioprinting in space. Improved Pharma, a pharmaceutical research company, provided the payload onboard Varda’s demonstration mission, which tested pharmaceutical crystallization in space. Ecoatoms aims to develop a variety of products through biomanufacturing in space. Machine Bio is working on protein synthesis and purification in space. Companies like G-Space are leveraging artificial intelligence algorithms to predict what applications and use cases are commercially viable. And these examples just scratch the surface.

Factories in Space has compiled an extensive list of company operating in this ecosystem.

Enabling Technologies

In addition to the above, technologies that will improve the capabilities, commercial viability, and cost-effectiveness of in-space manufacturing are being developed for other space market areas, and will have direct portability into future in-space manufacturing architectures. These enabling technologies include advances in rendezvous, proximity operations, and docking (RPOD), increasing levels of spacecraft autonomy using advances in artificial intelligence and compute architectures, and end-of-arm tooling technologies for robotic manipulation. Many of these technologies are being advanced in the satellite servicing market area, by companies including Kall Morris Inc., Starfish Space, GITAI, Astroscale, Rogue Space Systems, ClearSpace, and Northrop Grumman.

Concluding Remarks

While it is still early in the development of this emerging market area, the ingredients needed to make it successful exist and the availability of those ingredients is poised to expand rapidly in the next few years. One of the biggest risks that could disrupt the current trajectory of this market area is the cross-disciplinary nature of it. Potential investors in this market area may have expertise in the applications and use cases, but not understand the underlying space infrastructure, or vice versa. Thus, collaboration between life sciences, advanced materials, and space infrastructure investors will be important to ensure that companies in this ecosystem have access to the capital needed to scale their businesses. In addition, continued funding of R&D by government agencies, to find and advanced more use causes will be key to long term growth of this market area.

1. I’m using the term human-rated to refer to all of the Earth return capabilities developed under the NASA Commercial Crew and Cargo programs, even though not all of those vehicles carried humans. While writing this piece I found that there is not good terminology to distinguish between expensive human-rated systems and low-cost robotics systems, as a system could be “robotic” or uncrewed, but still be human-rated or require docking with human-rated systems, which are not representative of the low cost vehicles to which I intend to refer when using the term “robotic.” I also don’t like the term robotic, because it can conjure up imagery that is not relevant. I considered using the terms human-controlled, semi-autonomous, and autonomous, but that too does not provide the distinction I’m looking to make. While I will use the terms human-rated and robotic throughout this article, the distinction I intend to convey with those terms is high-cost vs low-cost, with the intended use of the vehicle, and thus the requirements driving its design, being the distinguishing factor between cost profiles.

2. SpaceX’s Starship is also expected to have down mass capability, but the categorization of its pricing as low-cost or not, is uncertain.