Magdrive, a UK-based propulsion startup, announced a $10.5M seed financing round today to ramp up the R&D of its unique satellite propulsion tech and open its first US office in Los Angeles.
Redalpine led the round, which also included participation from Balerion, Founders Fund, Alumni Ventures, Outsized Ventures, 7percent, and Entrepreneur First.
Electric avenue: The satellite propulsion market generally falls into two camps: those fueled with chemical propellants that offer high thrust but low specific impulse, and electric powered Hall-Effect thrusters, which sacrifice thrust for greater specific impulse.
Magdrive is introducing a third option, according to CEO Mark Stokes.
“What we’re building is a high-power electric plasma thruster. It’s got the same high specific impulse that you’d see with a Hall-Effect thruster, but with a magnitude improvement in thrust, [and] a magnitude reduction in volume and mass,” Stokes told Payload.
Magdrive’s thruster uses electricity gathered from solar panels to turn its solid metal propellant into hot plasma, which is then ejected from the thruster to provide movement in microgravity.
The system offers the best of both worlds, providing satellite operators the ability to optimize the trade-off between thrust and specific impulse on the fly by simply adjusting how much power is being put into the system. The result is that satellites will be able to maneuver more adeptly, opening the door for less risky RPO missions, and more efficient collision avoidance maneuvers.
What’s next: Magdrive is scheduled to fly its first in-space demonstration on a D-Orbit ION mission in June, where it will test the ability of its Rogue thrusters to maneuver sats in space.
The company will then begin pumping out thrusters, with the expectation of getting them in customers’ hands as early as the end of the year, and ramping up its production capacity to spit out hundreds per month by 2030.
Magdrive will ultimately produce three versions: Rogue; its slightly more powerful brother, Warlock; and Super Magdrive, which will be a much larger system, about the size of a washing machine.
Sci fi? Further down the line, Magdrive intends to be able to refuel its thrusters in orbit, potentially refilling their tanks with recycled space junk or metals mined in space.
