In 2025, rarely a week went by without some noteworthy event related to rare earth elementsmagnets and electric motors. IEEE spectrum was at the top of the big ones, starting with the production of industrial quantities of rare earth metal oxides. neodymium and praseodymium in Mountain Pass Mine and processing facilities in California's Mojave Desert.
Between 1965 and the mid-1980s, the Mountain Pass mine produced about 70 percent of the world's annual production. rare earth elementswhich are used in almost all powerful permanent magnets. But after a series of setbacks and environmental disasters in the 1990s and 2000s, these sites began to fall into disrepair. At the same time, Chinese manufacturers, who were much less constrained by environmental regulations, began their amazingly rapid ascent.
Today, China controls approximately 85 to 99 percent global market for key rare earth oxides and rare earth metals on which huge and vital high-tech industries depend. United States and its allies found themselves at the mercy of China over some rare earths, including those needed for motors, semiconductorselectroluminescent compounds, optoelectronicsand catalysis. They are found in the most important components of countless military systemsfor example, on airplanes, submarines, weaponand night vision devices.
For these reasons, the resumption of mass production of rare earth metals at Mountain Pass, which had been largely scalable through 2025became an important event in geopolitics. The total capacity of the mine and its associated processing facilities, where rare earth ore is converted into industrially useful oxides, smallhowever, compared to China's production volume.
The Trump administration spent a lot of time during 2025 trying to secure deals to create rare earth supply chains independent of China. It's an effort started to look puzzledwith loud hand twisting Ukrainewhose deposits are rejected by mining experts. And also with proposals for annexation Greenlanddistrict of the city Denmark whose reserves of rare earth metals are huge, but, like in Ukraine, unattractive from the point of view of mining. As the year passed, the administration eventually settled on a strategy similar to the Biden administration, which emphasized investing in domestic manufacturing and working with allies such as Australiato strengthen and expand existing magnet mining, processing and manufacturing facilities outside the United States.
So far, the administration has largely overlooked Canada (also one of Trump's annexation goals). Canada has exceptionally large reserves of rare earth elements and operates one of only four major rare earth oxide refineries outside of Asia. This Canadian plant, owned by a Toronto company Neo Performance Materialsis in Sillamae, Estonia.
Here are the eight most popular in 2025. Spectrum articles on rare earth elements, magnets and motors, ranked by the amount of time people spent reading them.
Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post/Getty Images
The Trump administration's first public move in its long-awaited rare earths strategy was a head-scratcher. IN White House press conference on February 28, 2025, at which observers expected to hear about a deal between Ukraine and the United States, including critical mineralsincluding rare earth elements, Trump instead got into a bitter dispute with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky. When the deal was finally signed two months later, it made no sense to mining and rare earth experts. Four large rare earth deposits in Ukraine, they notedall were in zones of active conflict with Russia. Moreover, two of them are a type of ore for which there are no existing processing technologies.
Michael Tessler/MP Materials
In 2024, the Mountain Pass mine and refinery in the northeastern Mojave Desert became the sole producer of rare earth oxides in America after it began producing neodymium and praseodymium oxides. Mine and plant since the early 2000s it was practically inactive, but in 2017 it was rebuilt and rehabilitated by a new company, MP Materials. In July 2025, MP Materials announced that the U.S. Ministry of Defense (now the War Department) invested $400 million to acquire a 15 percent stake in MP and also guaranteed a “minimum price” of $110 per kilogram for certain rare earth metal oxides. This price was approximately twice what China was charging for these oxides at the time.
Business wire
In early 2025, there were numerous announcements from companies touting plans to produce rare earth magnets in the United States. The most interesting of these comes from MP Materials, which operates the Mountain Pass mine and processing plants in California. The deputy stated that began production of neodymium-iron-boron magnets. on a “trial” basis at the Texas plant, which will eventually be expanded to 2,000 to 3,000 tons per annum.
In mid-July, MP Materials announced a $500 million agreement with Apple to begin supplying NdFeB magnets to the computer giant starting in 2027. Apple uses magnets in the speakers and haptic (vibrating) components of its phones and tablets, as well as in charging connectors such as the MagSafe cable.
Randy Pollock
mathematics use of chemicals rockets space travel is bleak. They are inefficient, slow and require huge amounts of fuel. They are not quite suited to the task of colonization Marsnot to mention visiting the outer planets. So researchers have long been exploring alternative modes of propulsion, some of which involve the use of high-power engines. magnetic fields accelerate and direct ions to create thrust. At Victoria University of Wellington New Zealandresearchers have demonstrated one of these systemsapplication-based magnetoplasmodynamic thrusters. Their peculiarity is the use of high temperature. superconducting tape to significantly reduce the power required to power the electromagnets to achieve a given magnetic field strength. Hēki, a technology demonstration consisting of new superconducting system components, excluding the engine itself, was launched into orbit. International Space Station in September. It was installed outside the station and has been running continuously ever since, Betina Pavri, senior chief engineer at the University of Victoria's Robinson Research Institute, said in an email in late November.
kinetics
electrification Passenger aircraft face a number of very serious technological challenges, one of which is the need for engines of extremely high power density. Of the various ways to achieve this, one of the most interesting is the use of high temperature superconductor (HTSC) materials in the motor coils. This is the startup approach kineticswhich was created from University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign and has received funding from Advanced Research Projects Agency – Energy (ARPA-E). In its engines developed for passenger aviation, Hinetics uses HTS tape, originally intended for winding powerful electromagnets used in experimental Tokamak thermonuclear reactors. Based on the performance of the prototypes, the company believes it will soon achieve a power density of 40 kW/kg, which is much higher than the radial flux motors that currently dominate commercial applications in vehicles and industrial equipment.
For many years, Airbus has had an important corporate goal: to build a large, single-aisle, zero-emission passenger airliner. The centerpiece of this effort was a project to create an ultra-efficient, high-power-density motor with superconducting coils. The engine will run from fuel cells liquid-powered hydrogen. It's a stunningly ambitious initiative called ZEROe, and it's miles ahead of all of Airbus' competitors. Boeing does. Most recently, at the end of March 2025, in symposium for the press, CEO of Airbus, Guillaume Fauryconfirmed the company's support for the blue sky project. But he also warned that Airbus does not see hydrogen-powered aircraft making significant inroads into the passenger aviation market until the 2040s, which has been interpreted to mean before the 2040s. late 2040s.
Donut Lab
In the wheel hub motors are one of the eternal grails of the electric vehicle industry. They will open up remarkable capabilities, including torque vectoring: the ability to precisely control power and torque at each wheel to achieve ultra-sensitive control. But fundamental problems have long prevented their widespread use. One is the need to deal with unsprung weight, which (in this case) refers to the weight of the wheels that are not supported by the vehicle's suspension and can therefore bounce around on rough terrain, making it much more difficult to maintain a smooth ride. Thanks to my last word, highest power enginehowever, Donut Lab The stated weight is only 40 kg and the rated power is 650 kW. These figures, he argued, made the problem of unsprung weight “inconsequential.”
Hannibal Hanschke/Reuters/Redux
In 2025, Greenland, another resource-rich and sparsely populated country, was repeatedly identified as a target for annexation. President Trump and other members of his administration. IN interview dated January 9, 2025Michael Waltz, then Trump national security Trump adviser directly linked Trump's interest in Greenland to critical minerals, including rare earth elements. However, extracting Greenland's rare earths on an industrial scale will require solving staggering problems. TO explain them in detailwe called Flemming Faithful ChristiansenDanish mining and geology Consultant with experience in research and exploration projects in Greenland.
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