NMRC site provides first ‘terrestrial anchor’ for UK space manufacturing

The £13 million project, which is part funded by the UK Space Agency (UKSA) Space Clusters Infrastructure Fund, has been undertaken by the Cardiff aerospace firm Space Forge.

It is located within Swansea University’s Centre for Integrative Semiconductor Materials (CISM), at which Space Forge was the site’s first incubation client

Commenting on the news, UKSA’s CEO Dr Paul Bate said: “The completion of the National Microgravity Research Centre is another concrete example of what our [fund] is designed to achieve – tangible, lasting infrastructure that strengthens the UK’s space economy and builds sovereign capability in strategically important technologies.”

Space Forge has played a key role in the translation of space-based laboratory techniques into industrial production processes. Its recently-tested returnable, autonomous ForgeStar satellites have the capacity to manufacture sophisticated materials for semiconductors and alloys.

In a statement, the company said the Swansea facility would form “the terrestrial anchor” of Space Forge's manufacturing model, with semiconductor seed wafers grown in the microgravity of low Earth orbit returned to Earth to be scaled at CISM.

Added Bate: “Space Forge has demonstrated real ambition, from launching the first British-built in-space manufacturing satellite to now establishing a world-class terrestrial facility at Swansea University. 

“This investment is helping to cement Wales and the wider UK as a serious player in the future of semiconductor manufacturing.”

With its own clean room incubation bay at the Swansea premises, the firm will have access to semiconductor processing and characterisation tools, together with CISM's wider community of semiconductor researchers, companies and innovators.

In December 2025, ForgeStar-1 generated plasma in orbit, demonstrating, it said, that the extreme conditions required for gas-phase crystal growth can be created and controlled aboard a commercial spacecraft. 

Space Forge’s work at CISM will focus on materials such as silicon carbide (SiC), gallium nitride (GaN) and gallium oxide (Ga2O3) which, the firm said, would benefit from the absence of convection and the ultra-high vacuum and stable thermal conditions found in microgravity. 

CEO and co-founder of Space Forge Joshua Western, remarked: "When we secured this funding in 2023 we set out to build something that would advance microgravity materials and open doors for other space companies to do the same. 

“Being based at CISM gives us access to world-class semiconductor infrastructure and a community of researchers and talent that will help us move faster."

Pic: CISM, Swansea University