Besxar Says 2 Orbital Fabships Produced Cleaner Wafers Than Earth-Made Chips
Updated
Updated · Букви · Sep 9
Besxar Says 2 Orbital Fabships Produced Cleaner Wafers Than Earth-Made Chips
3 articles · Updated · Букви · Sep 9
Summary
Two Besxar fabships launched in July with Starlink satellites met most test goals, and the wafers exposed to orbit came back cleaner with fewer foreign particles than Earth-made samples.
The startup is betting space’s vacuum can replace part of the cleanroom infrastructure chipmaking needs on Earth, where microscopic contamination can ruin semiconductor wafers.
One container suffered a flight-data system malfunction that Besxar is investigating, but the company said the broader contamination and survivability tests were successful.
Over the next 2 years, Besxar plans 12 Falcon 9 first-stage test flights before trying more complex factories on Starship to eventually make hundreds, then thousands, of wafers per facility.
That scale-up still depends on cheaper, frequent reusable launches from SpaceX and rivals such as Rocket Lab and Stoke Space, because returning enough finished wafers to Earth remains the key bottleneck.
Will the astronomical costs of rocket launches ultimately outweigh the financial savings of manufacturing advanced semiconductors in the vacuum of space?
How will startups protect delicate semiconductor wafers from extreme cosmic radiation and temperature swings while orbiting Earth at hypersonic speeds?