(Petram: Jersey City, NJ; Creation-Space: Tel Aviv, Israel) -- Petram, a deep-tech venture, has won the Jonathan Merage Global Subsurface Tech Challenge and a $40,000 prize for a low-noise, electric rock-breaking technology built to serve heavy industry on Earth today and subsurface construction on the moon tomorrow. Petram was selected from dozens of global applicants.

Creation-Space, a global commercial innovation platform that cultivates ventures with dual value technologies that create value on Earth and in emerging space markets, is the driving force behind the Mitzpe Ramon Space City Initiative, an international hub for extreme-environment innovation, robotics, digital twin simulation, access to space, and frontier entrepreneurship. It ran the challenge together with a global, multidisciplinary consortium of partners that includes the Jonathan Merage Foundation, Meitar Law Offices, Shapir Engineering and Industry Ltd., Access ConTech, Synergy 7, and CreationsVC.

The challenge asked applicants to solve any of three critical bottlenecks in subsurface extreme environments on Earth and on other terrestrial bodies: autonomous navigation in solid media, continuous material removal, and system resilience across varying geological substrates.

“Creation-Space specializes in transforming mission-critical technical needs into commercial solutions,” says Dr. Roy Naor, CEO of Creation-Space. “By approaching complex problems through structured global initiatives, we attract high-precision solutions like Petram that can scale across both the $2 trillion projected space economy and massive terrestrial industries.”

The winning breakthrough: Quiet shockwave crushing

Petram’s technology, spun out of NASA’s request for planetary subsurface, energy-efficient, rock-breaking solutions, features a high-power electric pulse (HPEP) system for eco-friendly rock-breaking, replacing explosives and chemicals with clean electricity and water. The company’s precision technology enables low-noise, vibration-free excavation and resource recovery for construction, mining, defense, and sustainable energy, including geothermal, with precise control of subsurface material fragmentation for both terrestrial and planetary bodies.

The $40,000 prize, provided by the Jonathan Merage Foundation, includes a fully hosted professional visit to Creation-Space’s innovation ecosystem in Mitzpe Ramon Space City, along with engagement with the competition’s partners in heavy industry, investors, philanthropy, legal frameworks, and deep-tech venture development. The challenge also received sponsorship support from Shapir Engineering and Industry Ltd. and Meitar Law Offices.

“Petram’s quiet plasma-based shockwave crushing technology exemplifies the kind of breakthrough we seek, solutions that can fundamentally transform industries on Earth while enabling future space infrastructure,” says Jonathan Merage, president of the Jonathan Merage Foundation. “Initiatives like this strengthen Mitzpe Ramon’s role as a global hub for space construction and deep tech.”

This is the outcome Creation-Space challenges are made to produce. Creation-Space turns a defined technical need from industry and its partners into a structured global competition, then connects the winning venture to the capital, testing infrastructure, and industry relationships that carry a technology toward real deployment.

The ‘dual-value’ strategy: From Earth to the moon

Petram’s selection reflects the dual-value model at the center of how Creation-Space works, prioritizing technologies with immediate commercial utility on Earth while building the capabilities required for a sustained lunar and Martian economy.

On Earth, Petram’s technology offers faster, lower-cost, low-impact excavation for mining, construction, demolition, geothermal energy, and urban infrastructure. On other terrestrial bodies, the same system is designed to enable subsurface tunneling for radiation-shielded habitats, server farms, and in-situ resource utilization (ISRU).