The era of stationary spacecraft may soon be over.
Portal Space Systems, a company led by propulsion expert Jeff Thornberg, seeks to contribute to a new renaissance of space transportation with its ultra-mobile Supernova satellite bus. Think of it as maneuverability as a service – technology that could power transfers from low Earth orbit to geostationary orbit in a matter of hours.
The 500 kg Supernova is designed to be payload independent and to survive in orbit for at least five years while being constantly maneuvered, the company said. This is a far cry from traditional spacecraft, designed to carry only the propulsion needed to maintain their orbit. Portal has designed a new propulsion system, called solar-thermal propulsion, which will produce a massive delta-V of 6 kilometers per second, to enable rapid transfer to cislunar space, or as a means of maneuver to support security missions national.
Portal was founded by space industry veterans Jeff Thornburg, COO Ian Vorbach and VP of Engineering Prashaanth Ravindran. Thornburg’s career reads like a history of the broader space industry. Spanning nearly 30 years, he has worked in virtually every major aerospace organization: as a military officer in the Air Force; working on liquid rocket engine technology at Aerojet; five years at SpaceX, where he eventually became second vice president of propulsion engineering; working with famed entrepreneur Paul Allen at Stratolaunch; and as director of Amazon’s Kuiper Project.
“Then I decided that I didn’t really want to live in a big company and that I really wanted to tackle some problems that weren’t being solved by any other company. So my co-founders and I founded Portal Space Systems in November 2021,” he said. said. “This is the only time I feel like I can predict the future, even the near future.”
Having spent most of his career in launch vehicle development and propulsion, he began thinking about what came next in the industry after SpaceX cracked the code to affordable, rapid launch and reliable. He’s noticed other trends, too: With more spacecraft launching into orbit than ever before, orbital collisions are becoming more likely. On the defense side, Thornburg also began to see more of the national security value in responsive space capabilities and the ability of satellites to maneuver “without regret.”
But satellites aren’t designed to move around much in orbit; typically they are launched with enough onboard propulsion to keep them in their intended orbit, so as not to dodge other objects, and certainly not without delta-V capability to go to a higher orbit. Supernova is part of a new generation of spacecraft that seeks to change that.
The company developed the Supernova propulsion system in-house. The solar thermal system leverages legacy technology designed by NASA and the Department of Defense, while innovating specific subsystems to optimize mission performance. For example, the company brings a proprietary heat exchanger to this solar thermal propulsion system to deliver even higher performance over a longer lifespan.
“I think the big force function here for commerce is just the proliferation of these LEO constellations that they have to get around, and the force function for DOD is China and the future engagement that people believe we’re going to having with them during this period. Taiwan and other issues These two things came together at the same time, which created the opportunity that I was hoping for, but I didn’t really anticipate it would be this big. .
Portal has raised an undisclosed amount of venture funding from anonymous backers, and Supernova’s first development is fully funded, the company said. The team also won more than $3 million through five awards from the Space Force and DOD, including a direct Phase II SBIR focused specifically on developing responsive space operations.
Portal aims to conduct a flight demonstration in late 2025 or early 2026. But even before that mission launches, Thornburg said the startup is looking to expand its team — which numbers about 25 people, but anticipates it will grow to 200 people. in 25 years – and expand manufacturing to support production of several spacecraft per year after this first demonstration.
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