DARPA this week announced that the agency’s NOM4D program has entered its third and final phase. In the first two phases of the Novel Orbital and Moon Manufacturing, Materials, and Mass-efficient Design (NOM4D) program, teams took Earth-based materials to simulate Moon regolith (lunar soil) and tried to use them as raw materials for in-orbit manufacturing.
In the final phase, teams will try to use Earth-based materials and manufacturing processes for testing in space, which includes a pair of small demonstrations to evaluate these novel materials and assembly processes.
As commercial space companies continue to open up access to orbit, it’s still tough to build large-scale structures up there because of the size and weight limits imposed by a rocket’s cargo fairing.
DARPA introduced NOM4D about three years ago to break free of current cargo constraints. Instead of nipping and tucking structures to fit into a rocket fairing to be unfurled or deployed in space, DARPA proposed stowing novel lightweight raw materials instead. The idea is to make much larger, more mass-efficient structures in orbit designed and developed specifically for low gravity.
For Phase 3, Caltech and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign have partnered with space-launch companies to conduct in-space tests.
According to Andrew Detor, NOM4D program manager, Phase 3 was originally going to take place in a lab, just making things more precise. However, things went so well that DARPA thought it would make a bigger splash if the teams took their capabilities out of the lab and demonstrated them in space.
“Pushing the performers to do a demo in space means they can’t just sweep challenges under the rug like they could in a lab,” Detor says. “You better figure out how it’s going to survive in the space environment.”
Caltech will work on mass-efficient designs for in-space manufacturing. The researchers have teamed with San Jose, California-based Momentus Inc. to demonstrate its technology aboard the Momentus Vigoride Orbital Services Vehicle, set to launch into low-Earth orbit on the SpaceX Falcon 9 Transporter-16 mission scheduled for February 2026.
The Caltech experiment will be “free-flying,” meaning it won’t have any human engagement once in orbit. Onboard cameras will provide real-time monitoring of structural assembly progress, but a gantry robotic device will autonomously assemble lightweight, composite fiber longerons (thin tubes) into a 1.4-meter-diameter circular truss to simulate the architectural structure of an antenna aperture. Detor says, “Think of it as an autonomous robotic assembly of a high-tech K’Nex or Tinkertoy structure to prove on a small scale that the manufacturing concept and materials function as designed in space.”
If successful, this would be the first step toward scaling up to building massive space-based structures in the future.
The University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign team is working on in-space materials and manufacturing. The researchers have created a high-precision, in-space composite-forming process. They partnered with Denver, Colorado-based Voyager Technologies to launch to the International Space Station aboard NASA’s Commercial Resupply Mission NG-24, tentatively scheduled for April 2026. The demo will take place in the Bishop Airlock module attached to the space station.
According to Detor, the University of Illinois’s technology uses a sleeve of carbon fiber that lays flat like a child’s finger trap and becomes a hardened reinforced structure. The team also has a liquid monomer, which consists of molecules that have not polymerized and are not solid. The monomers are engineered for space launch, with a suitable shelf life and the ability to survive the extreme temperatures in space.
“The UIUC team has developed a unique way to trigger the polymerization, or hardening, chemical reaction,” Detor says. “The process for most carbon fiber-reinforced epoxy, such as your skis or your tennis racket might be made of, involves bagging up the whole structure, infusing resin into the carbon fiber preform, and putting the whole thing into an autoclave to heat it up.
“If you want to construct a large structure in space, you don’t have a 100-meter autoclave you can put something into to heat it. So, they’ve developed what’s called a ‘frontal polymerization’ method, where you just ignite one end of the inside of the tube and the reaction self-propagates, stiffening the carbon tubes without heating up the whole structure. In theory, you could extend the process to produce very large structures once the polymerization process starts. You’d only be limited by the amount of feedstock coming into the process.”
Finally, a third team from the University of Florida won’t be involved with the in-space demonstrations, but they are working on laser sheet metal bending techniques that could provide valuable manufacturing possibilities in space.
The Florida team is developing new ways to bend metal with lasers and sharing its work with NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, which happens to have a laser space processing portfolio for welding and cutting metals.
“We’re paving the way for an in-space manufacturing ecosystem,” Detor adds.
If successful, the technology developed under the NOM4D program could be scaled to build giant RF antennas with diameters of 100 meters or more that could significantly improve situational awareness of activity in the Cislunar region and beyond.
After all, as NASA and private companies hope to create a space-based and lunar economy, large antennas will be critical to national security, especially in the region between Earth and the Moon.
According to Detor, NOM4D technologies could also enable other massive structures in orbit, like refueling stations for commercial or government spacecraft and space-based solar array farms. But how about full-fledged factories?
In July 2021, after Jeff Bezos spent about 11 minutes in space aboard his company’s Blue Origin New Shepard rocket, he said, “We need to take all heavy industry, all polluting industry, and move it into space.” He said such a transition would take decades, but his intentions were more environmentally focused. After witnessing the fragility of the atmosphere, he said it reinforced his commitment to climate change and protecting the environment. If successful, NOM4D’s work could one day help make the move off Earth.
However, while these technologies could be used between the Earth and the moon, DARPA notes that no moon-based technologies are being pursued in the NOM4D program.