Space Manufacturing Is About To Get Real

The U.S. Department of Defense research arm, DARPA, is serious about developing a space manufacturing infrastructure. The Novel Orbital and Moon Manufacturing, Materials, and Mass-efficient Design (NOM4D) program is developing, with private industry partners, novel space construction materials and methods. Initiatives include creating the tools and machines that will use raw materials shipped from Earth and turn them into finished manufactured items in outer space.

Today, we launch satellites into orbit. We create modules that are connected to each other in assembling a space station. But what if we could develop space construction methods that use raw materials either shipped from Earth or harvested from asteroids or the Moon to make space infrastructure? It means whatever gets built beyond Earth would no longer be constrained by the payload limits of rockets launched from Earth.

NOM4D began in 2022 here on Earth. So far, the project has remained terrestrial bound. Andrew Detor, NOM4D’s project manager, hopes to change this in 2026 with the help of Caltech and Momentus, a San Jose, California-based company founded in 2017 by two Russians, Mikhail Kokorich and Lev Khasis.

Momentus describes itself as a space infrastructure services company working on in-space transportation, hosted payloads and in-orbit services. It has developed the Vigoride service vehicle. The space tugboat, called Vigoride, is powered by the Microwave Electrothermal Thruster (MET). The propulsion system uses super-heated water as fuel and was first successfully demonstrated in April 2023.

Momentus has also developed the Tape Spring Solar Array (TASSA), a compact and lightweight tightly-packed solar array for space deployment to power spacecraft and space infrastructure.

NOM4D plans to use future Vigoride missions to deploy new space infrastructure technologies such as die-less fabrication, laser forming, and self-energized frontal polymerization for composites. It wants to use raw materials shipped to orbit to manufacture a 1 Megawatt solar array as proof of concept.

NOM4D seeks technology developers to provide autonomous robots for in-space assembly. One such robot has been built at Caltech. It is to be used in a Phase 1 demonstration planned for 2026 where it will manufacture polymerized tubes 50 millimetres (1.97 inches) in diameter and 0.5 metres (19.6 inches) long. These polymerized tubes will be de-orbited for the purposes of recovery and inspection.

If successful, the first planned outer space manufacturing project DARPA wants to see will be a 100-metre or larger space antenna built to accompany a launched long-wave infrared telescope.

When asked about the scale of future space manufacturing, Andrew Detor, NOM4D’s program manager stated, “If you want to construct a large structure in space, you don’t have a 100-metre autoclave you can put something into to heat it. So, they’ve developed what’s called a ‘frontal polymerization’ method, where you just ignite one end of the inside of the tube and the reaction self-propagates, stiffening the carbon tubes without heating up the whole structure.”

Besides the frontal polymerization method, NOM4D wants to experiment with biomechanical manufacturing of space structures. These structures would use biological processes and grow organically. The vision is to create 500 metres (1,640 feet) or longer builds for Earth orbit and cislunar space deployments. Detor sees the need to create refueling stations, space-based solar array farms and other fabricated structures. It’s not quite yet the shipyards of Star Trek, but ultimately, this is where DARPA wants space manufacturing to go.