Flawless Photonics is a startup founded in 2017 with registered trademark of FlawlessFiber™. Advanced in-space manufacturing company producing optical fibers LEO.
Created: 2018-11-07
Updated: 2024-07-29
Company - Flawless Photonics
- Founded
- Country
- 2017
- USA,Luxembourg
- Funding
- Yes, ?
Product/Service
- Classification
- In-Space Manufacturing
- Category
- In-Space Manufacturing
- Fields
- ZBLAN
- Status
- Demonstrated
- First launch
- 2019
Flawless Photonics, Inc. of Los Altos Hills, California, in partnership with the University of Adelaide, Axiom Space, and Visioneering Space has been selected for their proposal to develop specialized glass manufacturing hardware to process Heavy-Metal Fluoride Glasses (HMFG) in microgravity.
- HMFG glasses are used in the terrestrial manufacturing of exotic optical fibers and other optics applications. Without convective forces present in 1g, HMFG made in microgravity are expected to achieve the ideal amorphous microstructure during synthesis, eliminating light scattering defects that limit lasing power and transmission over long fiber lengths.
- Flawless Photonics, another 2022 InSPA award recipient, plans to develop specialized glass manufacturing hardware to process Heavy-Metal Fluoride Glasses in microgravity for terrestrial manufacturing of optical fibers and other optics applications.
They say to be pioneering the first profitable supply chain in space starting with the world’s most perfect optical fibers that will outperform silica fibers by more than 10x for industries including lasers, sensors, medical devices, and data communications. Later they are planning to produce an exciting array of superior photonic glass products to meet the emerging demands of many industries and applications.
Advancing SpaceFiber Manufacturing in Microgravity Onboard the ISS
- More than a dozen payloads representing diverse research areas will launch to the International Space Station (ISS) onboard Northrop Grumman’s 20th Commercial Resupply Services mission contracted by NASA. The launch is planned for no earlier than January 29, 2024.
- This investigation will leverage the space station to test microgravity-based glass drawing processes on a Flawless Photonics ZBLAN manufacturing platform. The project’s goal is to demonstrate the theorized benefits of manufacturing ZBLAN fibers in microgravity to effectively eliminate gravity-induced defects. By harnessing the unique environment of microgravity, Flawless Photonics aims to produce fibers that offer significantly enhanced performance for a wide range of applications, including advanced laser systems and telecommunications devices for both space and Earth applications.
- IP: Visioneering Space Corporation
Flawless Photonics Kicking Glass, SpaceNews, 2024-02-23
- Silicon Valley startup Flawless Photonics has produced more than 5 kilometers of ZBLAN on the International Space Station in two weeks.
- It’s an achievement that alluded other companies that tried to produce the fluoride glass in microgravity.
- Flawless Photonics’ “unprecedented results” are likely to prompt investigations into new types of glass that could be “very important for our defense industry and our national security,” said Rose Hernandez, director of InSpace Production Applications for the ISS National Lab. “Now they can tap into technologies that were not possible on Earth.”
- “The moon shot here is making undersea cables with ZBLAN,” said Michael Vestel, Flawless Photonics chief technology officer and vice president.
- So, instead of having inline optical repeaters to boost the signal in submarine communications cables “every 40 or 50 kilometers, you could have them at distances of 10 or 100 times that,” said Vestel, who earned a PhD in materials science and engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. “Why does that matter? It turns out the power of those amplifiers consumes energy on the order of 1 percent to 1.5 percent of the entire global budget of energy.”
- Samples of ZBLAN produced by Flawless Photonics are scheduled to return to Earth on a SpaceX’s Commercial Resupply Services flight in April. At that time, NASA and an independent third party will study the quality and composition of the optical fibers produced on ISS.
- The European Space Agency and Luxembourg Space Agency provided funding for Flawless Photonics’ machine for drawing optical fiber in space. The ISS National Laboratory paid for ISS transportation and installation in the Microgravity Science Glovebox.
- ZBLAN is produced from a heated cylindrical preform with a glass core surrounded by cladding and coating. As the fiber is pulled, it thins out and eventually breaks. A key feature of Flawless Photonics’ microgravity machine is its ability to restart the process of pulling optical fiber after the fiber breaks.
- For Flawless Photonics, the next step is making preforms in space. NASA’s In Space Production Applications program is paying for a preform manufacturing experiment by Flawless Photonics, Australia’s University of Adelaide, Axiom Space and Visioneering Space.
Commercial-grade optical fibres fabrication in space, 2024-03-28.
- University of Adelaide-produced special glass rods have been transformed into over eight km of optical fibre aboard the International Space Station.
- Professor Heike Ebendorff-Heidepriem, an Australian Research Council Industry Laureate Fellow and deputy director of IPAS, along with her ANFF-Optofab team, supplied 20 ZBLAN glass rods for ultra-low loss optical fibre.
- Upon the return of these space-drawn fibres to Earth, Flawless Photonics and the team at IPAS will conduct various analyses and experiments to determine the properties of the space-drawn fibres relative to fibres drawn on Earth.
Status Comment / Notes
Second payload launched on NG-20 in early 2024. Produced more than 5 kilometers of ZBLAN in two weeks in February 2024 (SpaceNews, 2024-02-23).
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