Helogen, the ​​company building autonomous factories in space for advanced material production, today announced two missions scheduled for October 2026. The missions will support the manufacturing of biomaterials for artificial retinas and orthopedic applications, while advancing the company’s work toward GMP-compliant production and FDA review.

Some of the most advanced materials used in modern medicine are built at a microscopic scale where small changes in the manufacturing environment can change the final product On Earth, gravity drives mechanical forces that can limit how cells, proteins, and other biological structures organize as they grow. In space, those forces are dramatically reduced, creating conditions for materials to form in ways that are difficult or impossible to reproduce on Earth. Biology also behaves differently in space, from accelerated aging and altered gene expression to changes in cell growth and tissue formation. Together, these effects create new ways to improve the performance, quality, and potential of bio-derived products made for use on Earth. Major advances in manufacturing have often come from finding fundamentally new ways to make things. Space is one of those new ways.

Helogen’s HEL-IOS platform turns these advantages into repeatable biomanufacturing in orbit. The autonomous factory brings the core steps of terrestrial precision biomanufacturing into a closed-loop orbital system, including cell and tissue cultivation, media and fluid management, environmental control, processing, separation, harvest, and in-process quality monitoring. CELS, Helogen’s NASA TechLeap Prize-winning autonomous analysis system, provides real-time characterization through imaging, spectroscopy, and sequencing. Together, these systems allow biological production to be monitored and controlled from start to finish with little to no human intervention from the ground.

The October missions mark the beginning of Helogen’s regulatory path for biomaterials manufactured in space. The company will use the flights to demonstrate that its orbital manufacturing process can meet, and ultimately exceed, the requirements expected of terrestrial GMP production, including bioburden control, material recovery, process consistency, traceability, and documented quality systems. In parallel, the company is beginning the work required for FDA oversight and eventual clearance of Helogen’s own proprietary materials manufactured on the platform. Data from these missions will help establish the testing, documentation, and quality standards needed to bring space-manufactured biomaterials into regulated human use.

“We have known for decades that microgravity can produce materials with properties that are difficult to replicate on Earth. What has been missing is the infrastructure and regulatory pathway to manufacture them repeatedly, autonomously and for use in human health,” said Shishir Bankapur, CEO of Helogen. “These missions begin that work. We are producing for customers, establishing the standards required for regulated manufacturing and building the systems needed to scale from kilograms to hundreds of kilograms.”

One mission will manufacture artificial retina material for LambdaVision, marking the company’s first mission beyond the International Space Station. The other will produce Helogen’s proprietary biomaterials for orthopedic repair, including knee and shoulder applications, as the company works with early commercial partners to validate their performance against terrestrial alternatives. These missions are designed to generate the mechanical, structural, and quality data needed to support broader customer adoption.

“LambdaVision has years of experience demonstrating the benefits of microgravity for the production of our protein-based artificial retina,” said Nicole Wagner, CEO of LambdaVision. “This mission marks an important next step as we expand our work beyond the ISS and begin testing our protein on a new autonomous platform. Our work with Helogen will help us establish additional quality controls for evaluating our protein on orbit, building on the knowledge gained through our ISS missions and allowing us to get closer to bringing this technology to patients.”

Helogen’s October missions are manifested across rideshare missions, giving the company access to two independent launch opportunities as it increases its flight cadence. Helogen is with D-Orbit on one of those missions to expand rapid, flexible access to orbit. The partnership is designed to compress timelines while allowing Helogen to remain focused on its core technology: autonomous manufacturing in space.

These launches are the first in a series of eight missions Helogen plans to conduct over the year. Each flight is designed to retire risk, validate repeatable production, and generate the manufacturing and quality data needed to advance the company’s regulatory strategy. As that cadence builds, Helogen will deploy more of its own infrastructure in orbit to support larger-scale manufacturing.

The missions will demonstrate the first layer of Helogen’s larger manufacturing architecture: HEL-IOS, its autonomous production system. Helogen is also developing the high-power, thermal-management and orbital infrastructure needed to operate these systems at industrial volume and across multiple orbits. Together, these capabilities are designed to support a fully autonomous manufacturing hub in space.

“We’ve been investing in the space sector for more than a decade,” said Will Porteous, General Partner and COO at RRE Ventures. “Shishir and his team have the most complete vision for scaling biomanufacturing in space of anyone in the sector and we were proud to lead this financing round.”

Helogen has raised $7.9 million to date from RRE Ventures, Oceans, One Way Ventures, Blisce, AUM, Aurelia Foundry, Mana VC, and other angels. That funding has supported the company’s two previous missions, the design and launch of its first spacecraft, development of HEL-IOS, recognition through NASA’s 2025 TechLeap Prize and partnerships across the commercial space and life-sciences sectors.

The company is now building toward its Series A as it expands its mission cadence, advances its regulatory work and develops the infrastructure required to manufacture high-value materials in orbit at commercial scale. It’s a market that has never had a supplier, where Helogen intends to be the first.

About Helogen:

Helogen Corporation is an American company that builds factories in space to manufacture advanced materials and products that benefit from microgravity. The company has flown its own satellite, won NASA’s 2025 TechLeap Prize, and is advancing toward regulated production of space-manufactured biomaterials. Helogen operates its manufacturing and engineering center in Los Angeles and its life sciences laboratory in New York, and is deploying infrastructure in orbit at increasing scale to turn space into a manufacturing hub. For more information, visit www.helogen.com.

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