Redalpine, Founders Fund back Magdrive’s electric thruster business

Orbital mobility took center-stage in the space industry last year, with venture capitalists funneling massive sums into startups developing tech for nimble satellite operations. So it’s no surprise that one of the most recent deals is to Magdrive, a UK-based startup that says its electric propulsion system for satellites will deliver a higher thrust in a smaller form factor than anything else on the market. Spacecraft designers have to consider a number of trade-offs when purchasing or designing propulsion systems. Chemical-based systems have high thrust but low specific impulse, or efficiency, while electric propulsion (EP) is very efficient but generates low thrust. Magdrive has developed an EP system that use solid metal propellant to generate high-energy plasma, with the same high specific impulse as a chemical system but a magnitude improvement in thrust and a magnitude reduction in mass, company cofounder and CEO Mark Stokes said. That means spacecraft operators can use electr ... Read full article.