The reality of space exploration isn’t quite how Hollywood depicts it. There aren’t yet any Star Wars-type hyperdrive thrusters, and the tech needed for a Star Trek-style energy transporter remains a distant vision.
The truth is we’re quickly moving toward a future that sees the immediate layer of space beyond Earth cluttered with debris, decommissioned technology, and satellite collisions.
The ambition to one day take humans to Mars, led by Elon Musk, is achievable in the long term, with the SpaceX CEO himself responsible for huge leaps in technological advances regarding space travel. However, if humans on Mars is the mountain summit, we believe there is work to be done at base camp, both to care for the immediate space beyond Earth and to better equip us as a species to one day bring forth an interplanetary existence.
We met at Imperial College London in 2017. Mark was earning his Masters in Neurotechnology and AI, while Thomas was in the final year of his PhD to become a Doctor of Philosophy and Plasma Physics. Our very earliest conversations involved us bouncing ideas off of each other, always about what kind of company we’d want to run and always about space tech.
We wanted to avoid the well-trodden ground. It was our ambition from the start to create something that changed the way we approach space entirely. One day a conversation over dinner set the tone for what Magdrive would become. We discussed a theoretical vision where purely electric propulsion technology could be launched into space, recharged, and then continue onwards.
How we work as cofounders is that one of us (Thomas) is a creative, with top-tier credentials and invention, while the other (Mark) thrives in taking those ideas and helping turn them into something achievable, and viable as a business. So while the initial concept and discussions were exciting, we concluded that the undertaking was huge, and, if nothing else, totally unaffordable.
Recent data suggests that around 10,000 satellites are orbiting the Earth today, with Musk responsible for an estimated two in every three. Experts predict that by the year 2030, there could be as many as 100,000 in orbit. To understand why this could become problematic is to discuss both how current satellites maneuver in space, and how they’re fueled:
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Most can’t remotely recharge, and manual recharging is extremely expensive and time-consuming. (Or they aren’t recharged at all, instead being left to become space debris.)
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They aren’t maneuverable or agile enough in their movement, meaning as space becomes crowded, there are regularly going to be satellite collisions.
Until now, solutions for making satellites more agile also made them heavier and bigger, in a world where every microgram of weight is accounted for. That and/or they’ve had to be fueled, which can be both hazardous and extremely expensive.
The initial idea we discussed over dinner that night provided the necessary solutions to these satellite propulsion problems—in a scaled-down, affordable format. We set to work building a small, light, rechargeable satellite propulsion thruster powered by extremely hot, efficiently captured, and dispelled plasma. Today we call it the Magdrive Rogue thruster.
The principles of the technology we’ve developed have implications far beyond satellite propulsion. We’re starting small—something that can fit on a satellite—but we want to scale this technology up to bigger and bigger levels. Radically improving space travel for satellites is essentially a proof of concept to allow us to open up entirely new kinds of technology.
We envision an entire ecosystem in space, assembled and manufactured in-orbit, which leads to in-orbit habitats. The current major limiting factor in space is the inability to effectively and efficiently move around. What we’ve developed at Magdrive solves this issue, first for satellites, and eventually for much bigger things.
Today, we’re announcing a $10.5 million raise, led by Redalpine, to further our ambitions to make this vision a reality. We’re building up to in-space testing of our thruster in June, and we recently onboarded the expertise of space-tech veteran Jerry Welsh, who joined the board of Magdrive’s U.S. entity.
In five years, we’ve grown from a team of two sharing a 200 sq ft office during the COVID years, to a staff of 30 members operating out of a 10,000 sq ft lab in Oxfordshire, England. We’re ready to play our part in bringing forward an interplanetary future. It’s all systems go.
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