Besxar tests orbital semiconductor manufacturing across 12 Falcon 9 flights
Ashley Pilipiszyn's first two Fabship development canisters flew in July, while the remaining campaign must prove material quality, reliable recovery and commercial economics.
By RuntimeWire Staff · Published
Primary source: TechCrunch
Why it matters
Besxar is using Falcon 9's launch cadence as a hardware development loop. Its 12-mission campaign could provide unusually frequent tests for orbital manufacturing, but the company still has to prove material quality, reliable recovery and economics at commercial volume.
Ashley Pilipiszyn (@AviatorAshley) is pursuing a 12-flight Falcon 9 campaign through Besxar to test whether reusable launch hardware can support orbital semiconductor-material manufacturing. TechCrunch reported on the campaign.
Publicly available disclosures do not establish the size, closing date, valuation or terms of a new financing round. Bee Partners, an early backer, has described approximately $5 million in pre-seed funding for the Washington, D.C.-based manufacturer.
Pilipiszyn arrived at orbital manufacturing after working on two infrastructure problems that rarely share a resume. She was a technical director to the CTO at OpenAI, where her public biography says she helped launch GPT-3, DALL-E, Codex and OpenAI's early developer platform. Before OpenAI, she led a Department of Energy-funded project at SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory applying AI to grid resilience, microgrids and data-center operations.
Besxar combines those threads into a materials bet: AI systems require denser computing infrastructure, while advanced power-semiconductor substrates face constraints involving heat and purity. Pilipiszyn wants to manufacture those substrates using microgravity and the vacuum of space.
She has framed semiconductors as the steel of the current industrial cycle. The analogy is grand. Besxar's current hardware is deliberately small.
A development flight, not a production line
A pair of Besxar development canisters flew on Falcon 9's Starlink 10-50 mission in July 2026, according to Spaceflight Now's account of the launch. The flight was part of a test program for launch survival, the space environment and recovery. It did not establish commercial-scale wafer production.
The July mission carried semiconductor samples manufactured on Earth. Besxar used the flight to test whether the canisters could survive launch and return, keep the samples from being damaged and expose them to the space environment. Besxar did not manufacture finished wafers during the flight.
The 12-flight campaign is a development and validation program. Each recovered payload can give Pilipiszyn's team hardware and samples to inspect before a later launch. The commercial case will require repeatable material quality, acceptable yield, reliable return and a delivered cost that semiconductor customers can justify.
SpaceX supplies the iteration speed
Besxar announced its SpaceX agreement in October 2025, covering 24 Fabship payloads across 12 Falcon 9 missions. The plan places two payloads on each mission and uses the returning first stage as the ride home for Besxar's hardware.
That arrangement gives Besxar repeated opportunities to test its hardware and materials before committing to a larger orbital manufacturing system. Semiconductor process development depends on repeated experiments, while space payloads face demanding integration and recovery requirements.
The short flights also limit what Besxar can attempt. A Falcon 9 first stage provides a brief exposure to the space environment, while an orbital spacecraft can run experiments for days or months. Besxar still has to show that lessons from the booster campaign can support longer-duration manufacturing and commercially useful production.
The orbital factory race already has hardware in space
Besxar is entering a field with several competing approaches. Space Forge is developing returnable ForgeStar spacecraft for advanced semiconductor materials and has described a December 2025 orbital semiconductor-manufacturing milestone, an early step toward running crystal-growth processes in orbit.
Redwire has developed the MSTIC semiconductor and thin-film manufacturing platform for use aboard the International Space Station. Varda Space Industries operates free-flying production spacecraft with dedicated reentry capsules, though Varda's initial commercial focus has centered on pharmaceutical processing rather than semiconductor substrates.
Besxar's architecture avoids building a complete free-flying spacecraft during the earliest development stages. The tradeoff is duration: a Falcon 9 booster offers minutes in the space environment, while an orbital vehicle can run experiments for much longer.
Pilipiszyn is initially targeting compound semiconductor materials including gallium nitride, silicon carbide and aluminum nitride. Those materials are used in high-power and high-temperature applications across data centers, energy systems, quantum computing, nuclear technology and defense. Besxar is working on substrates and precursor materials rather than complete CPUs or GPUs.
The campaign will test Pilipiszyn's central premise repeatedly: that a reusable rocket stage can provide a practical development path toward semiconductor manufacturing in space. The July flight put Besxar's hardware through launch and recovery. Material qualification, process yield and commercial production remain ahead.