Orbital Composites

Orbital Composites, headquartered in San Jose, California and founded in 2016, is an in-space manufacturing company developing robotic additive manufacturing (3D printing) systems for fabricating large composite structures directly in the space environment — targeting the manufacture of structures including large antenna reflectors, solar array panels, structural trusses, and habitat elements that are physically too large to launch inside a rocket fairing and therefore cannot be produced and deployed using conventional satellite manufacturing approaches.

Orbital Composites' technology combines continuous fiber composite deposition — extruding continuous strands of carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) or other reinforcing fibers along precisely controlled paths to build up structural parts layer by layer — with robotic arm-mounted print heads that can traverse the exterior of a spacecraft or space station to build structures far larger than the robot itself.

The key enabling insight is that the structural requirements for large space structures (strength, stiffness, thermal stability) are best met by composites, and that in the microgravity vacuum environment the printing process is actually simplified because there's no gravity-induced part deformation and no atmospheric contamination of the composite matrix material during cure.

The company has received DARPA and Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) research contracts under programs investigating large-aperture antenna fabrication in LEO and space-manufactured solar array structures. Large antennas for Earth observation radar, communications (GEO HTS phased arrays), and space-based solar power require apertures of tens to hundreds of meters that are fundamentally infeasible to launch as rigid structures. Orbital Composites' in-space manufacturing approach addresses this size limitation directly.

Orbital Composites competes with Tethers Unlimited (CHIMERA in-space fabrication), Made In Space (Archinaut, now part of Redwire), and Maxar's SSL in-space manufacturing programs in the nascent space manufacturing market.