History
ThrustMe was founded in 2017 by Ane Aanesland and Dmytro Rafalskyi, who previously worked at the École Polytechnique and CNRS as researchers in plasma physics and electric propulsion. [5] Initially, the startup was incubated in Agoranov. [6] Also in 2017, ThrustMe raised 1.7 million euros for its development. [7]
In 2018, ThrustMe received €2.4 million from the European Commission to commercialise electric propulsion for nanosatellites. [8]
In 2019, Ane Aanesland received the CNRS innovation medal for her entrepreneurial activities. [9] The same year, Spacety and ThrustMe maneuvered for the first time a satellite using iodine as propellant, with a cold-gas thruster. [10]
In 2021, ThrustMe, in partnership with Spacety, achieved the first in-orbit demonstration of an electric propulsion system powered by iodine. [3] [11] [12] The results were published as a research article in the journal Nature, where the maneuvers described resulted in a cumulative altitude change above 3 km. [13] [14]
According to the European Space Agency, in regard to the use of iodine rather than Xenon in a gridded ion thruster, "This small but potentially disruptive innovation could help to clear the skies of space junk, by enabling tiny satellites to self-destruct cheaply and easily at the end of their missions, by steering themselves into the atmosphere where they would burn up." [15]
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