Forged on Earth: Space Forge's first year of terrestrial manufacturing

Our CEO & Co-founder often describes our space-seeded semiconductor material as the sourdough starter. These materials benefit significantly from the absence of convection, ultra-high vacuum and stable thermal conditions found in microgravity, but space is just the start of the journey. When returned to Earth, there is a much broader manufacturing process they will go through.

In 2026, we officially opened our National Microgravity Research Centre (NMRC) at the Centre for Integrated Semiconductor Manufacturing (CISM), based at Swansea University.

The NMRC forms the terrestrial anchor of our hybrid manufacturing model. In the future, semiconductor seed wafers grown in the microgravity of low Earth orbit will be returned to Earth for further development and scale-up using advanced semiconductor infrastructure.

Before we start working with space-made materials, we’ve been building our terrestrial scale-up capability for radiation-hard wide bandgap power electronics materials, including silicon carbide (SiC), gallium nitride (GaN) and gallium oxide (Ga₂O₃).

This year, we switched on the reactors within the NMRC and began our first materials projects, working with real end users, learning what customers require and moving towards repeatable material production.

In spring this year, we completed two projects funded by Innovate UK. Each project focused on a different partner and element of R&D:

• With Microchip Technology, a leading semiconductor supplier of smart, connected and secure embedded control solutions, we focused on designing a new semiconductor package and improving heat removal. Our team successfully met stringent requirements regarding the thickness and shape of the material.
• With Helia Photonics, an optical products manufacturer, and Bay Photonics, specialists in photonics assembly and packaging for quantum, sensing and telecom innovations, the project centred on a concept demonstration, depositing gallium nitride onto diamond to create a prototype.

Alongside these Innovate UK-funded activities, we have been working on the ‘Expanse’ project, funded by the UK Space Agency and Space Wales. This enabled us to work with partners including Viper RF to obtain in-depth simulations and define critical parameters for product development.

We have also been undertaking independent research into diamond growth on various substrates.

Together, these projects represent our first year of terrestrial semiconductor manufacturing and an important step in building the capability, knowledge and partnerships needed to take advanced materials from R&D towards repeatable production. And this is just the beginning.

Data from ForgeStar-1 is already informing the design of future missions and the development of microgravity growth tools at the NMRC. As we continue to develop our capabilities on Earth and in orbit, we’ll be opening the doors to the NMRC and taking you behind the scenes of the people, processes and technology making it possible.

Space may give us the starting material. What happens next is Forged on Earth.