A propulsion company in space has just raised an astounding sum of money

Start

The initial product of the company was the Mira spacecraft, powered by nitrous oxide and ethane propellants. It can move useful loads up to 300 kg in space, and for a payload of 100 kg, it offers 900 m / s of Delta-V. With Mira, Impulse sought to tackle the problem of mobility once a spacecraft has entered orbit.

Mira has proven to be an almost immediately success, with the first vehicle launched in 2023 and operating for a year in space, demonstrating great mobility before ultimately exhausting his reservoirs of propellant. A second mission, Leo Express-2, was launched in January with several useful charges hosted and, so far, has achieved all its objectives. The mission remains in progress.

Initially, it was believed that this vehicle would be useful for providing “last mile” services for the spaceship launched as part of the carpooling missions.

“The reality is that the market is not very good,” said Romo. “If you are going to dimension this market, it is essentially the market of the market that the Rocket laboratory serves today, which represents 25 to 30 flights per year, which is good. You can do it, but not very well economically. Your gross margins will not be good. Your kind of working capital is. So, this is not at all the market that we are looking for with Mira.”

Since Mira had sufficient success during her first two flights, other customers have taken note.

“This is a large and high maneuverability spacecraft that can work anywhere to Geo,” said Romo. “And so when you think of spatial defense and space control, they need a quick response. So we are going to go from one GEO to another for. ‘”