Orbital Mobility won the central stage in the space industry last year, with venture capitalists focusing large sums of money on startups developing light-hearted satellite-operated technologies. So it's surprising that one of the latest deals is Magdrive, a UK-based startup that says that electric propulsion systems for satellites provide higher propulsion in a smaller form factor than anything else on the market. Not that.
Spacecraft designers need to consider many trade-offs when purchasing or designing propulsion systems. Chemical-based systems have high thrusts, but with a certain impulse, or less efficient, while electric propulsion (EP) is very efficient, but produces low thrusts. Magdrive has developed an EP system that uses solid metal propellants to generate high energy plasmas. It has the same specific impulses as chemical systems, but improved thrust magnitude and reduced mass size, and company co-founder and CEO Mark Stokes said.
This means spacecraft operators can use electric propulsion for a whole new class of missions without resorting to heavier, more expensive chemical thrusters. The company “can eat the electric propulsion market for breakfast and then come for Chemical Propulsion lunch,” Stokes said.
“Most of the future of the space industry is based on the ability to rendezvous satellites,” he predicted in a recent interview with TechCrunch. Usually, satellites are fired with enough fuel to maintain orbit for the life of the mission. However, more efficient propulsions can be used to create workarounds to reduce the risk of sustained rendezvous and proximity operations in imaging and satellite service missions, or to create workarounds to reduce the risk of orbital collisions, or defense and intelligence satellites. You can unlock all new features such as orbits. Can't track it.
Orbital mobility, sometimes referred to as “dynamic space operations” by Pentagon leaders, has become a major area of interest for the Department of Defense. Magdrive was one of six startups selected last year for Space Force's HyperSpace Challenge Accelerator.
Stoke said one of the biggest advantages of Magdrive's technology is its scalability. You can either deploy both the startup's first products, Rogue and the system called Logue, into a grid to combine thrusts, or build them in a literal larger form factor. The company is developing a dishwasher-sized “Super Mag Rib.”
Since Stokes and CTO Thomas Clayson founded the company in 2019, Magdrib has swelled to a team of at least 20 people, preparing to demonstrate the first two full-scale Rogue thrusters at Orbit this June. It's there. In 2020, they raised a $1.8 million (£1.4 million) seed round led by the Founders Fund, and raised about $10 million in undiluted subsidies to get to where they are now, Stokes said. To go further, the company shuts down a new $10.5 million funding round to manufacture its first commercial product, including ongoing R&D, employment, and even opening a US subsidiary in its office in Los Angeles. did.
The startup, founded by Stokes in 2019 with physicist Thomas Clayson, considers it a kind of infrastructure that will allow for the continued growth of the space industry over the next few years. Rogues and Warlocks are designed to be reusable using metals such as aluminum and copper found in space.
“We can use materials already in space to fuel and burn mag-drib as its propellant, but all other chemicals and electricity, unless we bring fuel from Earth every time, over the entire range of things. It won't,” Stokes said. “It's like building a new train every time you leave the station. You don't build a railway like that.”
This new funding round was led by Swiss Fund Redalpine and was the first to lead participation from Balerion, Founders Fund, Alumni Ventures, Outing Bentures, 7percent and entrepreneurs. After the first orbital demonstration this summer, Magdrib aims to launch the Warlock system in 2026 and a Super Magdrib in 2027.
“That's what's important. All of these new missions are looking at as fast as possible and not necessarily long, but as much as possible. …In those five years, we're looking at how much we can move. [of operational life]how much can you move? “Stokes said. “What we're bringing is a big improvement in how much maneuvering we can do over the last five years.”
