German propulsion startup ISPTech has raised \u20ac5.5 million in a seed funding round to expand development and production of spacecraft propulsion systems that use non-toxic fuels.<\/p>\n
The company said the new capital will help increase its workforce, build an in-house propulsion testing facility and scale production of its propulsion systems from several units annually to dozens per year by the end of the decade.<\/p>\n
The funding round was led by Join Capital and included participation from High-Tech Gr\u00fcnderfonds, Faber, First Momentum Ventures, Lightfield Equity, Final Frontier Liftoff, German Aerospace Center and Start-up BW Seed Fonds.<\/p>\n
Founded in 2023 by former engineers from the German Aerospace Center, chief executive Lukas Werling and co-founder Felix Lauck, ISPTech develops propulsion systems intended to reduce the operational risks and regulatory burdens associated with conventional satellite fuels such as hydrazine.<\/p>\n
The company is developing two propulsion systems. The HyNOx system targets spacecraft weighing less than 500 kilograms and uses a bipropellant combination of ethane and nitrous oxide. The HIP_11 system is designed for spacecraft above 500 kilograms and uses hydrogen peroxide combined with an ionic liquid fuel.<\/p>\n
According to the company, the HIP_11 fuel mixture has higher density than hydrazine, allowing spacecraft to achieve greater delta-v from a tank of the same volume.<\/p>\n
\u201cNon-toxicity helps test faster. You can develop faster, iterate faster, and the propellants are cheaper. You [also] have less regulations,\u201d Werling said. \u201cWhat we see is that the performance for those commercial applications is not a key driver.\u201d<\/p>\n
ISPTech said it has already secured customers, including ATMOS Space Cargo, and plans to deliver its first propulsion systems later this year.<\/p>\n
The company is also exploring additional propulsion configurations, including the possibility of using the HIP_11 propellant in both chemical and electric propulsion systems within a single architecture.<\/p>\n
Such an approach could allow spacecraft to combine high-thrust maneuvering capabilities with lower-thrust, energy-efficient propulsion for longer missions.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
German propulsion startup ISPTech has raised \u20ac5.5 million in a seed funding round to expand development and production of spacecraft propulsion systems that use non-toxic fuels. The company said the new capital will help increase its workforce, build an in-house propulsion testing facility and scale production of its propulsion systems from several units annually to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":21029,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[1133,244,7640,6505,455,6911,7641,7642,7643,7644,7645,6134,7646],"class_list":["post-21026","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-atmos-space-cargo","tag-europe","tag-felix-lauck","tag-german-aerospace-center","tag-germany","tag-green-propulsion","tag-high-tech-grunderfonds","tag-isptech","tag-join-capital","tag-lukas-werling","tag-non-toxic-space-fuel","tag-satellite-propulsion","tag-spacecraft-thrusters"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21026"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=21026"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/21026\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/21029"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=21026"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=21026"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=21026"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}