\u201cIt might even be sooner than that,\u201d he says. \u201cMore and more companies are getting involved.\u201d<\/p>\n
There are still several challenges to overcome before this vision can be brought to life.<\/p>\n
But an exciting new era of production is looming on the horizon, one that could generate fortunes for the people behind what could be the next industrial revolution.<\/p>\n
Impossible drugs<\/p>\n
The main draw of space manufacturing is gravity<\/a>, or rather the lack of it. The microgravity environment in Earth\u2019s orbit allows for some novel manufacturing techniques with a wide range of applications.<\/p>\n But while the companies involved try to gauge how valuable the in-space manufacturing market might be, the focus for the time being is on products considered to be the \u2018low-hanging fruit\u2019.<\/p>\n California-based company Varda, for example, is devoting its attention to creating novel drugs that can\u2019t be made on Earth.<\/p>\n Drugs produced on Earth are made in labs. Scientists use chemical reactions to make a molecule, which they then dissolve in a liquid (a solvent), before reducing that liquid, via evaporation, to form tiny seed crystals of the drug.<\/p>\n Those seed crystals are used to grow more crystals, which then have to be purified and mixed with other ingredients before they can be turned into tablets or injectable medicines.<\/p>\n In space, however, those seed crystals can be grown much more purely to begin with (the lack of gravity means far fewer impurities are produced).<\/p>\n \u201cMicrogravity allows molecules to assemble more slowly and uniformly, producing highly ordered crystal structures that are difficult or impossible to create on Earth,\u201d says Michael Reilly<\/a>, Varda\u2019s chief strategy officer.<\/p>\n \u201cThese differences can have meaningful implications for how medicines behave in the body.\u201d<\/p>\n Varda is still in the early phase of developing drugs that have space-made components, but Reilly says they \u201chope to have a space drug in a human in the next five years.\u201d<\/p>\n Another company looking into pharmaceuticals is BioOrbit, based in the UK and co-founded in 2023 by CEO Katie King<\/a>.<\/p>\n In April 2026 the company raised \u00a39.8m<\/a> ($13.2m) in seed funding and hopes to soon start producing products in space to bring back to Earth.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re building a pharmaceuticals factory in microgravity, ultimately to make crystals of drugs that you can\u2019t make here on Earth,\u201d says King.<\/p>\n One area that BioOrbit is targeting is anti-cancer antibodies.<\/p>\n According to King, by crystallising these antibodies in space, you can turn them from a drug that must be injected intravenously by a licensed healthcare professional at a clinic, into a drug that can be injected by the patient themselves at home.<\/p>\n BioOrbit\u2019s first piece of hardware was put into space in 2026. Called Box-E, it was a microwave-sized unit containing an experiment to test BioOrbit\u2019s crystal manufacturing process.<\/p>\n The experiment was launched to the International Space Station (ISS) in May 2026 and ran autonomously there before splashing back to Earth on a SpaceX Dragon capsule in June.<\/p>\n While the full results of the experiment have yet to be announced, King says the \u201cpreliminary results are looking great.\u201d<\/p>\n Initially, the company hopes to produce milligrams of drug crystals in space, but intends to eventually produce hundreds of kilograms of them.<\/p>\n Doing so would require commercial space stations<\/a> that are scheduled to launch to orbit in the next few years.<\/p>\n These stations will have room for astronauts, but also plenty of space for production equipment from companies like BioOrbit.\u00a0<\/p>\n Voyager, based in the US, is one of the companies building those space stations (as well as working on its own in-space manufacturing processes \u2013 in January 2026, it patented a technique<\/a> to grow photonic crystals, the type used in data centres and telecommunications, in space).\u00a0<\/p>\n The company plans to host other in-space manufacturing companies on its \u2018Starlab\u2019 station.<\/p>\n It\u2019s set to launch by the end of the decade and, according to Paul Tilghman<\/a>, Voyager\u2019s chief technology officer, \u201cour bookings are over capacity for our first year of operation.\u201d Something he sees as \u201ca really strong sign that there\u2019s unmet need in the commercial market.\u201d<\/p>\n Read more:<\/strong><\/p>\n Fragments of diamond<\/p>\n Another potentially lucrative avenue for in-space manufacturing is semiconductors \u2013 the kind used in microchips.<\/p>\n Space Forge (mentioned above) is looking to grow silicon crystals that can be sliced into wafers to make computer chips.<\/p>\n Chips made with space-grown crystal wafers would be more efficient than those made on Earth, potentially reducing the energy consumption of everyday electronics, data centres and power grids by up to 60 per cent.<\/p>\n The process is similar to producing pharmaceuticals: a crystal is grown inside a capsule (or perhaps one day a space station) and then returned to Earth.<\/p>\n Where it differs, however, is that instead of using liquids and solvents to produce the crystals, the process relies on temperatures of over 1,000\u00b0C<\/a> (more than 1,800\u00b0F) inside a furnace.\u00a0<\/p>\n In December 2025, Space Forge generated a high-temperature plasma<\/a> aboard ForgeStar-1, its first spacecraft, to demonstrate its technology.<\/p>\n Using this plasma, the company hopes to carefully control the growing process to produce synthetic diamond crystals.<\/p>\n \u201cYou can very slowly grow a crystal into kind of any shape you want,\u201d says Bacon, with a growth rate of \u201cmicrometres per hour.\u201d \u201cWhat we demonstrated in ForgeStar-1 is the most important part of this process: generating a stable, clean plasma in orbit.\u201d<\/p>\n The process should produce silicon wafers that are much purer than anything that could be made on Earth.<\/p>\n That could mean faster computers, better chips for AI<\/a> and many more applications. \u201c[With] these new super materials we make in space, we can make so many things more efficient,\u201d says Bacon.<\/p>\n BioOrbit and Space Forge both received contracts<\/a> from the UK government in February 2026, for \u00a3250,000 (nearly $335,000) and \u00a3300,000 (over $400,000) respectively, to develop the businesses.<\/p>\n A third UK company was also funded to the tune of \u00a3295,000 (approx $395,000). Called OrbiSky, it\u2019s looking to in-space manufacturing to produce better optical fibres that could greatly improve telecommunications and other areas.<\/p>\n In microgravity, the fibres \u201ccan solidify more uniformly,\u201d says Sylvester Kaczmarek<\/a>, the company\u2019s founder and CEO, \u201cresulting in higher-quality fibre with better optical properties.\u201d<\/p>\n Read more:<\/strong><\/p>\n Launch and return<\/p>\n Before we can begin making anything in space, however, we need to get the manufacturing machinery up there. And trickier still, we have to find a way to bring the products that machinery manufactures back.<\/p>\n Companies and governmental bodies have been toying with both for decades now, but nobody has found a way to do either in a manner that generates sufficient profit to make them a viable business.<\/p>\n That may be about to change, though.<\/p>\n Thanks to companies like SpaceX and Blue Origin, launch costs are lower than they\u2019ve ever been, with prices as low as a few thousand dollars per kilo for getting things into space.<\/p>\n Meanwhile, companies like Space Forge and Varda are working on ways to bring things made in space back to Earth.<\/p>\n Until now, anyone putting anything into space has had to rely on the relatively infrequent spacecraft coming back from the ISS to return things.<\/p>\n But a new era of re-entry capsules is dawning, which means that more products can be brought back more often.<\/p>\n \u201cYou can [return things] at a pretty fast clip once you figure out how to do the re-entry piece of it reliably,\u201d says Clayton Swope<\/a>, an industry expert at the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in the US.<\/p>\n Varda is the current leader in the field of return technology. It has flown six of its W-Series capsules to space (each one with a diameter slightly bigger than a bicycle wheel) and successfully returned them to Earth<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n Space Forge is also developing re-entry technology, but is taking a different approach.<\/p>\n It\u2019s developing a collapsible heat shield called Pridwen (the name of King Arthur\u2019s shield and a nod to Space Forge being headquartered in Cardiff).<\/p>\n The shield can be attached to almost any satellite and be deployed to protect it as the satellite re-enters Earth\u2019s atmosphere.<\/p>\n \u201cIt\u2019s very much an origami-deployed shape [with] a very high drag-to-weight ratio,\u201d says Bacon. \u201cThe shield is considerably larger than the satellite [it\u2019s attached to], which helps protect the [satellite and its payload].\u201d<\/p>\n He says a first test flight is expected in the next couple of years.<\/p>\n In terms of landing sites, Space Forge is initially planning on splashdowns off the coast of the Azores, near Portugal, where there\u2019s enough space and infrastructure for a safe retrieval.<\/p>\n In the future, the company might look to bring its spacecraft down somewhere on land.<\/p>\n Other companies are planning their own re-entry vehicles too, including SpaceX in the US.<\/p>\n In June 2026 the company launched a capsule called Starfall<\/a>, which it plans to use to bring items from space back to Earth, possibly including products made in orbit.\u00a0<\/p>\n While the exact details of Starfall are unknown, it\u2019s thought to be shaped like a hockey puck and measure roughly the size of a car.<\/p>\n Despite SpaceX\u2019s immense resources (the company was recently valued at nearly $2tr on its entry into the US stock market) Bacon welcomes the additional focus on in-space manufacturing Starfall might bring.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe see it as validation that this market is going to be as big as we say it is,\u201d he says.<\/p>\n \u201cIn-orbit manufacturing for return to Earth could easily be the largest market in the space industry by 2040 and there\u2019s plenty of room for us, SpaceX and many more companies as there are thousands of potential products to make.\u201d<\/p>\n Future opportunities<\/p>\n The potential for in-space manufacturing is clear, but one thing that isn\u2019t is the law surrounding it.<\/p>\n To start with, there are questions around spacecraft lifting off from one country and landing in another, especially when what\u2019s inside those spacecraft makes them more valuable than when they launched.<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/made-in-space-Ritonavir.jpg\")
A close-up of the crystallised antiviral drug ritonavir, which was successfully made in Earth\u2019s orbit during Varda Space\u2019s W-1 mission in 2023 – Image credit: Varda Space<\/p>\n![\"BioOrbit\u2019s](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/made-in-space-BioOrbit-box-e.jpg\")
BioOrbit\u2019s Box-E crystal manufacturing experiment unit spent around six weeks aboard the ISS between May and June 2026 – Image credit: BioOrbit<\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/made-in-space-ForgeStar-1.jpg\")
Space Forge\u2019s ForgeStar-1 spacecraft was designed and built in Cardiff. An origami-style collapsible heat shield, known as Pridwen, is wrapped around the outside – Image credit: Space Forge<\/p>\n![\"Varda](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/made-in-space-varda-w5-reentry.jpg\")
Varda Space\u2019s W-5 mission saw one of its W-series capsules spend nine weeks in orbit before successfully re-entering Earth\u2019s atmosphere and landing in Australia\u2019s Koonibba Test Range on 29 January 2026 – Image credit: Varda Space<\/p>\n![\"Space](\"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/ie\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/08\/made-in-space-Origami-heat-shield-reusable-for-reentries.gif\")
Space Forge\u2019s origami-based heat shield, Pridwen, is designed to ensure safe atmospheric re-entry for satellites and other spacecraft – Image credit: Space Forge<\/p>\n