A geothermal drilling rig just finished working on one of the least forgiving places for heavy equipment, a live construction site in downtown Boston.

Dig Energy completed its first paid commercial installation at 100MAG, Suffolk’s AI and innovation hub near the construction firm’s headquarters. The Massachusetts startup used its compact drilling platform to install geothermal heating and cooling infrastructure for the building.

The drilling operation started in early August and finished in about two weeks. Workers carried out the work while construction continued around them, giving Dig a real test of its approach in a crowded commercial setting.

Geothermal drilling gets smaller

Geothermal heating and cooling has relied on mature technology for decades. The difficult part has often been getting the drilling done without driving up project costs.

Traditional drilling equipment can demand substantial space and labor. That creates a particular problem on urban construction sites, where available space can be scarce.

Dig built its drilling system around those constraints. The company says its rig needs only a fraction of the footprint and crew used by conventional drilling equipment.

At 100MAG, the active drilling area occupied only a few parking spaces at any given time. That allowed the geothermal work to fit into an operating construction site without taking over a large section of the property.

“Suffolk has led some of the most complex and sophisticated construction projects in the country,” said Dulcie Madden, co-founder and CEO of Dig Energy.

Madden said the 100MAG site tested the technology under tight spatial constraints and a demanding schedule. She added that Dig’s equipment could integrate into Suffolk’s construction workflow.

That matters because geothermal projects can require drilling before a building can use the system. A smaller drilling platform could make that step easier to accommodate alongside other construction activity.

Suffolk puts system to work

The installation also gives Suffolk a chance to judge geothermal technology through an actual project rather than a demonstration. Suffolk Technologies, the construction firm’s venture arm, invested in Dig through its BOOST 6 accelerator. The program brings emerging construction technologies onto Suffolk projects for real-world deployment.

Parker Mundt, a partner at Suffolk Technologies, said the project showed how Dig’s compact platform could reduce the cost and complexity of geothermal installations. Suffolk now has direct experience with the drilling process at a commercial property. That experience could help the contractor assess geothermal systems for future projects across its portfolio.

The opportunity extends beyond conventional office construction. Suffolk works with customers investing in geothermal and on-site energy infrastructure, including education facilities and data centers.

Dig plans to put its drilling system through several more New England projects in the coming months. The planned sites include a grocery store, a utility headquarters and a small campus.

Those deployments will put the compact rig against different site conditions and building requirements. They could also show whether the space and labor savings seen at 100MAG hold up across a wider range of commercial projects.

R3 Lithium has started producing lithium carbonate from recycled battery materials at its facility in Covington, Georgia.

The 154,000-square-foot plant is designed to recover lithium at commercial scale. R3 also raised $15 million in Series A funding to upgrade the operation.

The company expects the Georgia facility to produce more than half of US lithium carbonate output in 2027. Its existing production line can make 2,500 metric tons of lithium carbonate annually.

Georgia plant targets scale

The facility can shred as much as 30,000 metric tons of battery material each year. That feedstock includes manufacturing scrap and batteries reaching the end of their useful lives.

Shredding produces black mass, which contains the valuable materials left inside lithium-ion batteries. R3 processes that material at the same site to recover lithium and produce lithium carbonate.

The process combines calciner-based crystallization with water-based precipitation. Keeping those steps together eliminates the need to ship lithium-bearing material elsewhere for refining.

The facility previously produced 99%-pure lithium carbonate using entirely recycled material. R3 acquired the site in July after its previous owner invested about $150 million into the operation.

A second 2,500-metric-ton production line could eventually double the site’s lithium carbonate capacity. R3 has also secured roughly $1 billion in offtake agreements with customers.

Trafigura is among the buyers supporting those agreements. Tim Wood-Dow, a battery metals trader at Trafigura, said domestic lithium supplies remain limited.

Recycling cuts supply chain

The approach could give US battery manufacturers another source of domestically processed lithium. Much of the world’s battery production and processing capacity remains overseas.

Developing new lithium mines also takes considerable time. Projects can spend seven to 10 years navigating permitting before production begins.

Recycling existing batteries offers a different route to supply. R3 can source lithium from material already circulating through the battery economy.

Demand for lithium carbonate is also expanding as battery storage grows. Global battery storage installations surpassed 300 gigawatt-hours during 2025.

Data center construction has added another source of demand for large energy storage systems. Each gigawatt-hour of grid-scale storage requires about 880 tons of lithium carbonate.

R3 plans to build additional facilities across North America and Europe. Each site would use modular production units capable of processing 5,000 metric tons annually.

The company plans to secure customer offtake agreements before deploying those units. That strategy would let R3 expand capacity in stages as demand develops.

One site handles recovery

The Covington facility also recovers materials beyond lithium. Its process produces concentrated metal oxide containing nickel, cobalt, manganese, and graphite.

R3 can sell those materials separately after extracting the lithium. That creates additional value from the same recycled battery feedstock.

Keeping the process on one site also reduces the number of locations involved in moving battery materials through the recycling chain. Scrap and spent batteries can enter the facility and emerge as refined lithium carbonate.

R3 now wants to replicate that model across additional sites. If its expansion targets hold, recycled batteries could become a larger source of domestically produced lithium carbonate in the US.

A satellite has fired a Hall-effect thruster fueled by solid zinc in orbit for the first time, giving spacecraft designers a new option for electric propulsion.

Muon Space completed the test on July 1 aboard SERT-III, a dedicated propulsion test spacecraft. The mission tested the company’s Starlight propulsion system under real orbital conditions.

The thruster fired successfully on its first attempt. Telemetry matched ground-test predictions, while orbital tracking detected a measurable change in the spacecraft’s trajectory.

Zinc aims at xenon

Hall-effect thrusters have become a standard choice for efficient satellite propulsion. Most systems use xenon or krypton, which require high-pressure storage and add complexity to spacecraft designs.

Starlight takes a different approach. Its propellant comes as solid zinc, which remains stable at room temperature and does not need a pressurized tank.

That could simplify spacecraft integration and ground operations. Zinc also costs less than traditional noble-gas propellants and has a much broader supply base.

Those factors matter as satellite operators deploy larger constellations. Cutting propulsion hardware and propellant costs can become significant when the same system flies across dozens of spacecraft.

Muon says Starlight can support orbit raising, station keeping, and controlled deorbiting on small and medium-sized satellites.

The system also addresses a practical challenge that has followed electric propulsion for years. Satellite operators need efficient thrusters, but propulsion hardware must also fit tight spacecraft mass and integration constraints.

SERT-III tests hardware

Muon designed SERT-III specifically to examine how the propulsion system behaves in space. The spacecraft carried sensors to measure performance, spacecraft interactions, and material deposited by the thruster plume.

Ground testing had already established expected performance across different throttle levels and operating conditions. The orbital test provided a chance to see whether those results held up in microgravity.

They did. The thruster fed and vaporized zinc reliably during the firing, according to Muon. Tracking data also confirmed that the spacecraft experienced the expected thrust.

Engineers also watched for unwanted zinc deposition around the spacecraft. Thermoelectric Quartz Crystal Microbalance sensors detected less deposition near the thruster than conservative preflight models predicted.

That result gives engineers more data for understanding how zinc behaves after leaving the thruster. It should also help refine plume and contamination models for future spacecraft.

Muon CEO Jonny Dyer called the orbital firing a major milestone for electric propulsion. He said the company chose to acquire Starlight Propulsion because zinc could address persistent problems in the propulsion supply chain.

The test also avoided putting experimental hardware on a primary customer mission. SERT-III gave engineers a spacecraft dedicated to collecting propulsion data without placing another mission at risk.

Customer missions next

Muon now plans to incorporate the flight data into further development of Starlight. Engineers will focus on reliability, manufacturing, and plume management as the system moves toward production.

The company expects its current-generation thruster to reach customer spacecraft before the end of 2026. Muon is also developing a larger second-generation system. It plans to test Gen2 in orbit during the first quarter of 2027.

That version will target larger spacecraft and could expand zinc-based Hall propulsion beyond the smaller satellite market. If the upcoming tests confirm the early results, solid-metal propellant could become a practical alternative for more commercial spacecraft.