Kreios Space is aiming to launch its first flight to VLEO in 2028.
The Spanish startup—which is building air-breathing electric propulsion (ABEP) tech for satellites to operate below LEO—today announced its selection of Kongsberg NanoAvionics to supply the satellite bus for Kreios’ first demo.
The flight plan: Kreios’ debut mission will attempt to validate the company’s ability to fire an ABEP thruster at a range of altitudes below LEO.
The company will deploy ~300 to 350 km above the planet and spend the mission drifting down to Earth, firing the spacecraft’s engine at different altitudes and studying the atmospheric conditions across the new orbital regime. Kreios will also host up to two as-yet undisclosed payloads.
While Kreios’ ultimate goal is to build both a propulsion system and satellite bus optimized to survive seven to 10 years in VLEO, its demo flight will be a sprint, not a marathon.
- The in-orbit demo will fly on a Kongsberg NanoAvionics’ MP42 microsatellite bus.
- That spacecraft is not optimized for the increased orbital drag in VLEO, so Kreios will have just six to ten months to gather data.
While the short mission timeline is a bummer, working with Kongsberg NanoAvionics also offers a significant pro—giving Kreios a flight-tested platform to get to orbit much faster than building a bus in-house. The goal of the mission is to get to space quickly, gather as much data as possible, and use those insights to inform the design of future Kreios-built buses that will be able support long-term flights.
“We wanted to test the thruster, so even if the platform is not specifically adapted [to VLEO]…It still allows us to complete the mission objectives,” Kreios CEO Adrián Senar told Payload. “So we can then build our own platform with all that data according to those results.”
Start your engines: Kreios is aiming to be the first commercial company to fly an ABEP in VLEO, but there’s a growing crowd of companies racing toward the same finish line.
- In June, UK startup NewOrbit raised an $18.5M Series A to fund the development of its ABEP satellite platform, which is targeting a first flight in 2028.
- In May, Bellatrix Aerospace announced a collaboration with Korean payload manufacturer TelePIX to fly an ABEP-powered VLEO sat NET 2028.
- In November, Redwire landed a $44M DARPA contract covering the development of an ABEP for VLEO flights as low as 90 km. The company has not yet released a date on its first mission.
Given the growing competition, Kreios is moving fast to gain and maintain a first-mover advantage. With data from its first flight, Kreios intends to build multiple types of buses, each optimized for various customer payloads at various VLEO altitudes.
“By 2029, we want to have the full platform,” Senar told Payload. “We are already building it. We will iterate with the results of the first [in-orbit demo], but…by 2029, we want to have the first full-drag-compensated platform that can stay at 200 to 250 km for sustained periods of time.”
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