Testing lifts off into space as companies eye orbital launches

The space compute race is on — and testing’s next big leap is beyond Earth

The race to design space-enabled semiconductors is shaping out faster than anybody anticipated. More companies are now looking skyward to test their brands of semiconductor technologies. Nara Space, the Seoul-based aerospace technology provider, reportedly just won a contract with South Korea’s Ministry of Science and Information and Communication Technology (ICT) to serve as its executing agency for a project that involves testing space semiconductors in orbit. 

The project, titled “Development and Demonstration of Space Semiconductor Verification Payload and Design of Microsatellite” seeks to verify the reliability and adaptability of domestically produced space semiconductors in the space environment. 

According to reports, seven kinds of Korean chips will be launched into orbit aboard a 6U-class microsatellite, where they will remain for an extended period of time, studying the effects of radiation, vibrations, and thermal vacuum on the hardware. 

Data gathered from the experiment will later be used to inform and improve semiconductor reliability models, a necessary step to expand the use of semiconductors in satellite systems. 

“This selection is further recognition of our technological and operational capabilities, and we will continue to expand the foundation so that semiconductors proven through in-orbit demonstration can become core components in the global market,” said Lee Jeongkyu, executive director of Business at Naraspace. 

The project builds on a trend that has taken shape most visibly over the course of 2025. As new computing paradigms have emerged in the form of AI and quantum, tech labs worldwide are exploring inventive ways to develop and test space semiconductors to help big tech partners build infrastructure off-Earth.

But tech companies face significant roadblocks in their mission to putting data centers in space. Deutsche Bank analyst Edison Yu wrote in an open letter, “There are clearly technical challenges to making this a viable endeavor but these seem to be engineering constraints as opposed to physics.” Some of those are costly launches, limitations in current radiator designs and cooling problems.

However, for now, the push has sparked a broader interest in formerly lesser-known concepts like microgravity semiconductor manufacturing and space-based testing. Industry groups, including NASA, have long argued that microgravity conditions in low Earth orbit (LEO) are especially conducive for semiconductor manufacturing. Low gravitational forces, coupled with a sterile environment, allow semiconductor crystals to achieve the perfect and purest atomic arrangement with lower defect densities. These conditions are extremely difficult to reproduce on Earth.

So, now countries with strong scientific infrastructures and commercial backing are teaming up with universities and research bodies in this budding niche to explore the viability of an Earth-to-space supply chain. 

In summer of 2025, U.K.-based startup Space Forge launched a microwave-sized semiconductor factory into orbit — the first of its kind — aboard a commercial satellite. The factory, which is now being tested from the company’s mission control center in Cardiff, can make manufacturing in microgravity environment a reality. Even more mind-boggling, in a recent demonstration, the unmanned mini-factory successfully generated plasma in orbit, confirming that in-space manufacturing is possible without humans on board. 

“Keeping people alive in space is expensive,” Clayton Swope, deputy director of the Aerospace Security Project at the Center for Strategic & International Studies, said in an interview with Scientific American.

Commending the concept of unmanned manufacturing in space, Swope added, “If machines can do that work instead, it brings down the cost of doing manufacturing in space.”

In another breakthrough, researchers at the University of Florida deployed a suite of photonic AI hardware prototypes to the International Space Station (ISS) in October, 2025. Conducted in collaboration with institutions like MIT, NASA, AIM Photonics, and Germany’s Fraunhofer Heinrich Hertz Institute, the trial aims to study the behavior and performance of photonic AI chips when exposed to space radiation and atomic oxygen.

Since the 2000s, the International Space Station (ISS) has served as the testbed for advancing semiconductor research and development. Now, as big tech sets sights on ambitious orbital computing initiatives, in-space testing is rising to prominence as a means to prove that hardware can perform reliably beyond terrestrial lab conditions. In that backdrop, there is a growing belief that the compute performance gap opened by demanding bandwidth-hungry AI applications could be narrowed — if the industry is willing to pursue avenues that extend beyond Earth.