Besxar, a new company, is set to conduct tests on semiconductor production technology in space through a series of Falcon 9 launches. The innovative approach involves attaching specialized payloads to the rocket's booster. On October 28, Besxar announced an agreement with SpaceX for 12 Falcon 9 missions, potentially starting before the year's end. The financial details of the agreement remain undisclosed.
Unlike standard SpaceX clients, Besxar won't be deploying payloads into orbit. Instead, each of the 12 launches will feature two "Fabship" payloads fixed to the boosters. These boosters will then return to Earth, landing shortly after liftoff, carrying the payloads with them. These payloads, roughly the size of microwave ovens, are designed to evaluate systems being developed by Besxar for manufacturing semiconductor wafers in the vacuum of space.
"I’d like to believe we’re taking a bit of a different approach," said Ashley Pilipiszyn, Besxar’s founder and chief executive, in an interview. "One of the things that we realized is companies like SpaceX have figured out launch and reentry really well and on a repeatable basis.”
These initial Fabships, known as "Clipper-class" payloads, are primarily focused on testing the safe launch and landing of semiconductor materials. "This is pretty much the ultimate egg drop challenge," she said. "We wanted to ensure that not only could we get wafers to and from space and do all these wonderful things with them and do deposition, but can we actually reliably bring them back without warpage, cracking, anything like that.”
Pilipiszyn stated that securing a dozen flights allows for rapid iteration on the Fabship design, including hardware reuse. She drew a parallel between the Clipper-class payloads and SpaceX's "hopper" prototype for Starship, which tested takeoff and landing technologies. "That is really, I think, a different way of thinking about the space economy," she said. "It’s not just price per kilogram, it’s how many times you’re launching and what your turnaround time is.”
These 12 missions are projected to occur over the next year. Pilipiszyn anticipates that the company will gather sufficient insights from this series to advance to a new phase of missions, though specifics were not revealed. While many ventures in space manufacturing aim to leverage microgravity, Besxar is prioritizing vacuum conditions. According to Pilipiszyn, this could provide the necessary purity for semiconductor fabrication, avoiding the substantial costs of recreating such conditions on Earth.
Pilipiszyn highlighted that semiconductor manufacturer TSMC plans to invest $50 billion in a new fabrication plant for advanced chips. She attributed a significant portion of this cost to the equipment and processes required to maintain ultra-clean environments, which space could naturally offer. “The vacuum of space is really key for us,” she said. “Microgravity is a benefit. It’s not like it does anything negative, but it’s not the core offering.”
Besxar, located in Washington, D.C., has “more missions on contract than employees,” Pilipiszyn said. The company has received an undisclosed amount of funding from "strategic angel" investors and institutional backers. Pilipiszyn stated that this funding is adequate to complete the Clipper-class series of missions on SpaceX launches. “We view ourselves as an American semiconductor manufacturing company that happens to work in space, versus a space company as we typically think about them,” she said.
Besxar's objective, she added, is to leverage space to enhance semiconductor manufacturing and ensure U.S. competitiveness against China. “One of the things we’re really striving to champion is that in-space manufacturing is American manufacturing and really just part of this larger supply chain,” she said.