 | |
| Company type | Private |
|---|---|
| Industry | |
| Founded | 2021 |
| Founder | Tom Mueller |
| Headquarters | , |
| Website | www |
Impulse Space was founded in 2021 by Tom Mueller, employee No.1 at SpaceX and engineer of the Merlin and Draco rocket engines that power the Falcon 9 and Dragon spacecraft. [1] The company develops in-space transportation services for satellites that fly to Low Earth Orbit then need to reach other orbits.
Impulse Space designs and manufactures orbital transfer vehicles, [2] sometimes called space tugs, to move satellites and payloads throughout space.
The size of a dishwasher, a Mira orbital transfer vehicle weighs approximately 300 kg (660 lb) when loaded with propellant. [3] It uses Saiph bipropellant thrusters which have a specific impulse (Isp) of 290 s. [3] [4] It can impart a delta-v of up to 500 m/s.[ citation needed ]
In November 2023 the first Mira flight was launched as part the SpaceX Transporter-9 mission. [3] [5] [6] [7]
Orbit Fab, in a mission funded by the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU), has contracted Impulse on a GEO in-space refueling mission using Mira. [8]
On January 17, 2024, Impulse announced their new high-energy kick stage, Helios. [9] It is intended to propel up to 4 tons launched on a Falcon 9 and 5 tons on Relativity's Terran R vehicle directly into geostationary orbit. With a diameter of just under 3.5 meters, Helios is sized to fit within a Falcon 9 fairing. [10] [11]
In July 2022, Impulse Space announced a joint mission with Relativity Space to land on Mars. Impulse is responsible for building the lander itself, the cruise stage and the entry capsule. Relativity would launch the spacecraft on its Terran R, which is currently under development. [12] The mission has since moved to a 2026 launch date. [13]
Since the founding of Impulse in 2021, the company has developed several rocket engines — Saiph, Rigel, and Deneb — for use in spacecraft.
On May 10, 2023, an Impulse Space press release announced the successful qualification of their 5 lbf (22 N) Saiph thruster. [14] Using the propellants of Nitrous Oxide and Ethane, the thruster achieved a burn duration of 12 continuous minutes and 50,000 pulses over the 17 day qualification period.
The company incorporated eight Saiph thrusters into their Mira spacecraft, which launched to Space September 2023 on the SpaceX Transporter-9 mission. The company announced their successful firings of all eight thrusters in a November 2023 mission update. [15]
Vast, a privately funded commercial space station company, procured Impulse's Saiph thrusters and propulsion hardware for its Haven-1 mission. [16] [17] [18] [19] In May 2023, Vast unveiled its Haven-1 station and announced that SpaceX would launch the spacecraft and provide taxi services to the future habitat. [20]
Rigel was the company's first rocket engine, designed for use on Impulse's Mars Lander vehicle. The engine has undergone extensive testing from the company's Mojave Air and Space Port facilities. [21]
Deneb is a 15,000 lbf (67 kN) staged combustion cycle engine that uses liquid oxygen (LOX) and methane as propellants. It is being developed as the main engine of Impulse's Helios vehicle and would burn 14,000 kg of propellant across each mission. [22] [23]
Impulse Space investors include Founders Fund, Lux Capital, Airbus Ventures, Space Capital and RTX Ventures. [2] [24] [25]
| Joined board | Name | Background |
|---|---|---|
| 2021 | Tom Mueller | Impulse CEO and Founder. |
| 2024 [26] [27] | General John W. Raymond | Chief of Space Operations for the United States Space Force from 2019 to 2022 |
Impulse Space operates from three American locations. Its corporate headquarters operate from a 60,000-square-foot facility in Redondo Beach, California. [28] [29] In February 2023, the company opened an office in Boulder, Colorado. Rocket engine tests are conducted at the Mojave Air and Space Port. [30] [31]
Spacecraft propulsion is any method used to accelerate spacecraft and artificial satellites. In-space propulsion exclusively deals with propulsion systems used in the vacuum of space and should not be confused with space launch or atmospheric entry.
A monopropellant rocket is a rocket that uses a single chemical as its propellant.
A resistojet is a method of spacecraft propulsion that provides thrust by heating a typically non-reactive fluid. Heating is usually achieved by sending electricity through a resistor consisting of a hot incandescent filament, with the expanded gas expelled through a conventional nozzle.
In spacecraft propulsion, a Hall-effect thruster (HET) is a type of ion thruster in which the propellant is accelerated by an electric field. Hall-effect thrusters are sometimes referred to as Hall thrusters or Hall-current thrusters. Hall-effect thrusters use a magnetic field to limit the electrons' axial motion and then use them to ionize propellant, efficiently accelerate the ions to produce thrust, and neutralize the ions in the plume. The Hall-effect thruster is classed as a moderate specific impulse space propulsion technology and has benefited from considerable theoretical and experimental research since the 1960s.
An ion thruster, ion drive, or ion engine is a form of electric propulsion used for spacecraft propulsion. An ion thruster creates a cloud of positive ions from a neutral gas by ionizing it to extract some electrons from its atoms. The ions are then accelerated using electricity to create thrust. Ion thrusters are categorized as either electrostatic or electromagnetic.
The Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter (JIMO) was a proposed NASA spacecraft designed to explore the icy moons of Jupiter. The main target was Europa, where an ocean of liquid water may harbor alien life. Ganymede and Callisto, which are now thought to also have liquid, salty oceans beneath their icy surfaces, were also targets of interest for the probe.
A solar thermal rocket is a theoretical spacecraft propulsion system that would make use of solar power to directly heat reaction mass, and therefore would not require an electrical generator, like most other forms of solar-powered propulsion do. The rocket would only have to carry the means of capturing solar energy, such as concentrators and mirrors. The heated propellant would be fed through a conventional rocket nozzle to produce thrust. Its engine thrust would be directly related to the surface area of the solar collector and to the local intensity of the solar radiation.
Laser propulsion is a form of beam-powered propulsion where the energy source is a remote laser system and separate from the reaction mass. This form of propulsion differs from a conventional chemical rocket where both energy and reaction mass come from the solid or liquid propellants carried on board the vehicle.
Solar electric propulsion (SEP) refers to the combination of solar cells and electric thrusters to propel a spacecraft through outer space. This technology has been exploited in a variety of spacecraft designs by the European Space Agency (ESA), the JAXA, Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) and NASA. SEP has a significantly higher specific impulse than chemical rocket propulsion, thus requiring less propellant mass to be launched with a spacecraft. The technology has been evaluated for missions to Mars.
The gridded ion thruster is a common design for ion thrusters, a highly efficient low-thrust spacecraft propulsion method running on electrical power by using high-voltage grid electrodes to accelerate ions with electrostatic forces.
A plasma propulsion engine is a type of electric propulsion that generates thrust from a quasi-neutral plasma. This is in contrast with ion thruster engines, which generate thrust through extracting an ion current from the plasma source, which is then accelerated to high velocities using grids/anodes. These exist in many forms. However, in the scientific literature, the term "plasma thruster" sometimes encompasses thrusters usually designated as "ion engines".
Spacecraft electric propulsion is a type of spacecraft propulsion technique that uses electrostatic or electromagnetic fields to accelerate mass to high speed and thus generating thrust to modify the velocity of a spacecraft in orbit. The propulsion system is controlled by power electronics.
A space tug is a type of spacecraft used to transfer spaceborne cargo from one orbit to another orbit with different energy characteristics. The term can include expendable upper stages or spacecraft that are not necessarily a part of their launch vehicle. However, it can also refer to a spacecraft that transports payload already in space to another location in outer space, such as in the Space Transportation System concept. An example would be moving a spacecraft from a low Earth orbit (LEO) to a higher-energy orbit like a geostationary transfer orbit, a lunar transfer, or an escape trajectory.
Thomas John Mueller is an American aerospace engineer and rocket engine designer. He was employee No.1 of SpaceX and is now the founder and CEO of Impulse Space.
A liquid apogee engine (LAE), or apogee engine, refers to a type of chemical rocket engine typically used as the main engine in a spacecraft.
NASA's Pathfinder Technology Demonstrator (PTD) Project is a series of tech demonstrations of technologies aboard a series of nanosatellites known as CubeSats, providing significant enhancements to the performance of these versatile spacecraft. Each of the five planned PTD missions consist of a 6-unit (6U) CubeSat with expandable solar arrays.
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