Orbital Composites announced that it has received a $1.9 million Tactical Funding Increase contract award from SpaceWERX, the innovation arm of the U.S. Space Force.
The award will fund continued development of Orbital’s robotic additive manufacturing platform for extreme environment materials. These materials are designed for components that must survive conditions such as temperatures above 3,000°C, high-velocity combustion gases, and repeated thermal shock cycles.
Orbital Composites is focused on building AI-driven factories for extreme environment materials. The company’s platform combines robotics, advanced materials, and physical AI to streamline the manufacturing of high-performance components used in defense, space, and energy applications.
The award reflects growing recognition of a domestic manufacturing capacity gap for advanced materials used in next-generation systems. Extreme environment materials are used in applications such as rocket nozzles, heat shields, hypersonic vehicle structures, jet engine hot sections, and nuclear reactors.
These components have historically been constrained by high costs, 12- to 18-month production cycle times, and limited domestic manufacturing capacity. Orbital’s technology is designed to reduce those constraints by producing components faster and at lower cost than conventional methods.
The company said its initial goal is to help eliminate supply constraints on solid rocket motors, which have limited what the U.S. military can field. More broadly, Orbital’s manufacturing platform is designed to support missile defense, hypersonics, space vehicles, nuclear microreactors, and other national security and strategic industrial priorities.
Orbital is working with defense prime contractors, U.S. government program offices, and commercial space and energy providers to scale qualification and production. The company is also investing in manufacturing capacity, program qualification, and physical AI systems to support its autonomous production vision.
Founded in 2015 and headquartered in Campbell, California, Orbital Composites works with the U.S. Space Force, Air Force Research Laboratory, and defense prime contractors to transition next-generation materials manufacturing from advanced development into operational capability.
KEY QUOTES:
“This work addresses a critical barrier to the rapid scaling of manufacturing for high-temperature rocket nozzles to serve the U.S. warfighter. Our initial goal is to eliminate the supply constraints on solid rocket motors that have long limited what the warfighter can field — and this award is a concrete step toward that objective. This is also about restoring U.S. manufacturing dominance in materials that are foundational to our national security and economic competitiveness. We are grateful to our SpaceWERX, AFWERX, and AFRL partners for their leadership in making that possible.”
Amolak Badesha, Chief Executive Officer of Orbital Composites
“Extreme environment materials are the bottleneck in some of the most critical systems the U.S. fields, and today’s manufacturing methods are too slow, too costly, and too capacity-constrained to meet what the moment demands. We are building toward a future where that constraint no longer exists — where AI-driven factories take in a design file and produce a mission-ready part, at operationally relevant cycle times and cost.”
Cole Nielsen-Cole, Founder and Chief Technology Officer of Orbital Composites
