Construction Companies

AI SpaceFactory

New York, United States commercial

AI SpaceFactory is a space architecture and technology company that won NASA's 3D Printed Habitat Challenge ($500K). The company develops autonomous 3D printing technology using lunar regolith and biopolymer matrix materials. AI SpaceFactory successfully tested printing at -200°C in vacuum conditions and built the first lunar road in a simulated space environment, advancing extraterrestrial construction capabilities.

Astroport Space Technologies, headquartered in San Antonio, Texas and founded in 2020, is a lunar surface infrastructure company developing sintering and construction technologies that use in-situ lunar regolith — the abundant surface soil covering the Moon — to manufacture load-bearing pads, roads, berms, and structural elements directly on the lunar surface, eliminating the need to launch heavy construction materials from Earth. The fundamental challenge Astroport addresses is landing pad erosion: when rockets land or launch on the Moon's loose, unconsolidated regolith surface, the high-velocity exhaust plumes create a 'sandblasting' effect that ejects rocks and debris at high speed in all directions — a known risk for other nearby surface assets that could be damaged by ballistic projectiles. NASA's Artemis architecture, with multiple landers operating near permanent bases, requires hardened landing pads to prevent successive missions from destroying each other's equipment. The cost of shipping concrete or metal landing pad panels from Earth (at roughly $10,000-50,000 per kilogram in launch costs) makes conventional construction materials prohibitively expensive. Astroport's approach is microwave sintering: a rover-mounted microwave emitter heats regolith in place to approximately 1000-1200°C, fusing the individual soil particles into a solid ceramic-like material without requiring imported binders or water. Lunar regolith contains silica, iron, aluminum, and other minerals that vitrify under heating, creating a hard, porous structure with sufficient compressive strength to support spacecraft loads and erosion-resistant enough to deflect exhaust plumes. The rover autonomously drives back and forth over a landing zone, sequentially sintering strip by strip to build up a hardened surface. Astroport has received NASA SBIR contracts for regolith sintering technology development and terrestrial demonstration in simulated regolith test beds. The company competes with ICON (which uses 3D printing for lunar construction) and Masten Space Systems' former regolith processing work in the lunar ISRU and construction market.

ICON

Austin, United States commercial

ICON is a construction technology company developing Project Olympus, a lunar construction system using robotic 3D printing with laser vitrification of regolith to create landing pads, habitats, and roads on the Moon. The company received a $57.2M NASA contract for lunar surface construction. ICON built Mars Dune Alpha, NASA's simulated Mars habitat, and is advancing autonomous large-scale 3D printing for space applications.

ThinkOrbital

Denver, United States commercial

ThinkOrbital, based in the United States, is pioneering autonomous in-space manufacturing and assembly technologies — specifically developing orbital electron beam welding systems and structural assembly robots capable of constructing large space structures directly in orbit rather than launching pre-assembled components from Earth's surface, addressing a fundamental constraint on the size and geometry of structures deployable within launch vehicle fairings. In May 2024, ThinkOrbital demonstrated the first-ever electron beam welding system operated in the orbital environment — a landmark in space manufacturing. Electron beam welding (EBW) is particularly suited to space: the hard vacuum of orbit eliminates the need for the protective vacuum chamber required for EBW on Earth's surface, and the high-energy focused electron beam can weld metals with very deep penetration and minimal heat-affected zone, producing strong joints in the aluminum alloys, titanium, and stainless steel used in space structure construction. This space-native process advantage makes orbital EBW potentially superior to terrestrial welding for certain joint geometries. ThinkOrbital's intended applications span multiple in-space economy sectors: large space station module assembly (welding structural sections that arrive via launch vehicle to construct stations far larger than any single fairing could accommodate), satellite servicing and repair (patching micrometeorite damage, repairing structural anomalies on orbit), debris processing (cutting up large defunct satellites and rocket bodies into trackable or deorbitable pieces), and in-space manufacturing of structural components from raw material stock delivered in high-density form. The company's technology addresses a core constraint of current space station architecture: the ISS is assembled from modules that fit within Space Shuttle and Soyuz Proton fairings, limiting individual module dimensions. Future stations (commercial LEO stations, lunar Gateway, potential Mars transit vehicles) could be vastly larger if welded assembly on orbit replaces fairing-limited delivered modules. ThinkOrbital competes conceptually with Made In Space (Redwire), Nanoracks manufacturing concepts, and Axiom Space modular assembly approaches.