Marc Galobardes Esteban cofounded Amura Space (formerly known as CISGAM Inc.) in 2025, to rethink how the space industry approaches propulsion in orbit.
The company is designing electrospray-propulsion systems intended to enable customers to execute much more precise movements in orbit.
“As I dug deeper into both the technology and the space industry, I realized there was a major gap,” he said. “Many small satellites were limited in what they could do because existing propulsion systems simply did not fit their size, power, or mission constraints.”
Electrospray 101: In electrospray propulsion, liquid is atomized into very small drops. Thin needles control the amount of propellant that’s able to flow through, producing thrust.
Galobardes Esteban likened it to sitting in an office chair with wheels, and setting off a fire extinguisher. “If you fire it, you move backwards,” he said.
Origin story: The tech at Amura Space evolved from Galobardes Esteban’s prior work, both as a PhD student at University of California, Irvine and at NASA’s JPL.
“I didn’t want to do modeling,” he said of his decision to spin out the company. “I know I wanted to take this from the lab to a commercial product.”
Milestones: Since then, the company has notched significant wins, including:
- Receiving an Embedded Entrepreneur Initiative award from DARPA, for its VLEO thruster work;
- Joining the Techstars accelerator program in Fall 2025.
Amura Space is expecting to fly its first in-space demo in June. The company is also close to closing its pre-seed round—which was moved up to allow the company to take advantage of the flight opportunity next year. That money will also enable the company to hire a senior commercial advisor and engineers, Galobardes Esteban said.
James Shin, K2 Space
“As I begin to understand how much [impact]…things like cellular telecommunications, imaging, climate [research]…have globally—once I started to understand that, I was like, ‘Okay, this is definitely the industry that I want to work in,’” Shin told Payload.
Robert Ihnatisin, Orbital Matter
As an expert in 3D printing for terrestrial applications, Robert Ihnatisin was surprised by how slow the in-orbit manufacturing industry was progressing. So, naturally, he started a company to solve the problem himself.
Patrick Miga, Advanced Space
In first grade, Patrick Miga saw a photo of Neptune (snapped by the Voyager 2 spacecraft).. Ever since then, his life has been directed toward space.
Muhammad Hunain, Melagen Labs
“That’s where I realized we’re stuck at a 1980s standard: still shielding spacecraft with aluminum, and rad-hardened electronics [were] too expensive to build at the scale this economy demands,” Hunain told Payload.
Dallas-based Balerion Space Ventures has surpassed its $200M target for its second fund, the firm announced Thursday. Fund II—which remains open—is more than five times the size of the firm’s debut fund, which came in at just under $40M.
Balerion had closed ~$90M as of May, according to Venture Capital Journal. Cofounder and General Partner Daniel Kleinmann chalked up the momentum since then to portfolio companies hitting milestones and raising up-rounds—which he said resonated with LPs.
The firm is also holding back capital for follow-on rounds. “These are really capital-intensive businesses,” Kleinmann told Payload. “Having the ability to reserve capital to continue supporting these businesses as they hit major technical, commercial, government milestones is really important to us.”
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