{"id":5123,"date":"2025-06-23T15:54:37","date_gmt":"2025-06-23T07:54:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/ion-x-completes-first-in-orbit-firing-of-european-ionic-liquid-thruster\/"},"modified":"2025-06-23T15:54:37","modified_gmt":"2025-06-23T07:54:37","slug":"ion-x-completes-first-in-orbit-firing-of-european-ionic-liquid-thruster","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/ion-x-completes-first-in-orbit-firing-of-european-ionic-liquid-thruster\/","title":{"rendered":"ION-X Completes First In-Orbit Firing of European Ionic Liquid Thruster"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"ION-X<\/p>\n

ION-X<\/strong> has successfully performed the first-ever in-orbit firing of a European developed ionic liquid electrospray thruster. This milestone marks only the second global demonstration of this advanced propulsion technology in space, nearly a decade after the inaugural mission by BUSEK for the LISA-PATHFINDER mission in 2015.<\/p>\n

On May 6th, 2025, onboard a spacecraft built by Danish satellite manufacturer Space Inventor and launched on SpaceX\u2019s Transporter-12 mission in January 2025, ION-X\u2019s thruster emitted its first ion beam in Low Earth Orbit. Triggered by its onboard computer and powered by ION-X\u2019s proprietary Power Processing Unit (PPU), the system successfully generated thrust estimated at 20 \u00b5N, with an ion beam of 200\u00b5A at 5kV.<\/p>\n

Tests in orbit are still on-going, and this is already a significant achievement for the company. The first ionic liquid electric propulsion system was developed by BUSEK under a NASA contract and launched in 2015 for the LISA PATHFINDER mission. Ten years later, ION-X demonstration is only the second occurrence worldwide of an ionic liquid electrospray firing in space and the 1st from a European company.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe worked really hard over the past three years to achieve these first results. I am immensely proud and grateful to the ION-X team. We could not have done it without their dedication and professionalism. There is still a lot of work to increase the performances and the reliability of our thruster but this is a clear sign that we are going in the right direction.\u201d Thomas HIRIART<\/strong> \u2013 ION-X CEO<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

This achievement is the culmination of three years of intense R&D made at C2N, the nanoscience laboratory of CNRS located in Palaiseau, south of Paris. It marks a major step toward the deployment of European-made electrospray propulsion technologies for the next-generation of space missions.<\/p>\n

\n

Also Read: What is an Electrospray Thruster?<\/h4>\n<\/div>\n

A Broad Demonstration of Capabilities in Orbit<\/u><\/strong><\/p>\n

Beyond this historic firing, the EDISON mission also allowed ION-X to validate a wide range of capabilities, including:<\/p>\n

\u2022 End-to-end communication between Earth and the thruster, via the satellite<\/p>\n

\u2022 Embedded software in-flight updates<\/p>\n

\u2022 Automatic FDIR (Failure Detection, Isolation and Recovery) algorithms<\/p>\n

\u2022 High-voltage generation and control<\/p>\n

\u2022 Safe handling and storage of ionic liquid propellant<\/p>\n

\u2022 Orbital conditions transfers and telemetry management<\/p>\n

\u2022 Precise control of ionic emission through current-voltage algorithms<\/p>\n

ION-X\u2019s compact and scalable thruster is tailored to meet the growing demand for high-precision, lowpower propulsion systems. It addresses critical use cases such as constellation deployment, collision avoidance, and station-keeping for small satellites. Its electrospray design enables extreme miniaturization, low plume contamination, and high pointing accuracy, key performance drivers for satellite manufacturers and mission integrators.<\/p>\n

The first flight model was integrated on the Space Inventor\u2019s EDISON spacecraft in May 2024, just three years after ION-X\u2019s incorporation and with a total budget under \u20ac4 million, a remarkable programmatic, financial and technical achievement in the field of space propulsion.<\/p>\n

As the EDISION mission is expected to terminate this summer, ION-X is already gearing up towards its next space missions. The second flight of the company\u2019s thruster shall be publicly announced in the coming weeks, for a launch expected by mid-2026. This will give the opportunity to the company\u2019s team of engineers and scientists to fly an even more sophisticated version of its propulsion system, with the aim to demonstrate increasing performances and accelerate its commercial and industrial development. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

ION-X has successfully performed the first-ever in-orbit firing of a European developed ionic liquid electrospray thruster. This milestone marks only the second global demonstration of this advanced propulsion technology in space, nearly a decade after the inaugural mission by BUSEK for the LISA-PATHFINDER mission in 2015. On May 6th, 2025, onboard a spacecraft built by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"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":[26,25,49,20],"class_list":["post-5123","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-ground","tag-launch","tag-propulsion-systems","tag-satellite"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5123"}],"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=5123"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5123\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5123"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5123"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5123"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}