IENAI raises €4 million for space electrospray thruster system

The Madrid-based startup said the latest round of investment brings the total funding of IENAI to €7 million. The investors included the Spanish companies Inveready, WA4STEAM, DPM, GED Conexo Ventures, and CDTI, a Spansih government backed investor that matches private investment.

Following the investment, IENAI said it plans to hire additional staff (increasing from 22 to 30 employees).

It also plans to expand its current manufacturing and testing facilities across Europe, with clean-room facilities already located in Madrid and Barcelona and Uppsala (Sweden), as a result of agreements with CNM-CSIC (Instituto de Microelectrónica de Barcelona) and Uppsala University.

Commercialisation

“[The funding] allows us to consolidate the next steps towards commercialisation of our core products, which in turn enables us to substantially grow the business,” said Dr. Daniel Pérez Grande, CEO and co-founder of IENAI Space.

“We really can’t wait for our clients to get their hands on ATHENA, our electric propulsion system. It will offer them world-class efficiency, compactness, and customisation options to cater for a wide range of space missions.”

The company highlights that it had passed two milestones that were fundamental to the funding round.

ATHENA

Firstly, its electric propulsion system ATHENA (Adaptable THruster based on Electrospray powered by Nanotechnology) successfully fired for almost 400 hours. This is a 0.5U thruster and its compact form can be used by smaller satellites or CubeSats.

The firing test was part of a successful preliminary design review (PDR) with ESA. It represents the longest firing (independently verified by the agency) of an ionic-liquid electrospray thruster in Europe.

Revisiting a 1970’s technology, the system uses liquid salts as a non-toxic propellant. This propellant is readily available as its already used for many industrial applications.

An ATHENA standalone prototype is pictured (right, above) and its architecture is pictured below. Note that the system is one of three currently being developed by ESA to harness electrospray propulsion for space.

360

The second company milestone was releasing the beta test of its space mobility and mission analysis and design software tool “360”, pictured right.

IENAI Space says around 30 companies joined the test release. The company is now on-boarding startups from various incubation and acceleration programs across Europe, as part of the ESA’s IRIS programme for satellite-based air traffic management, in partnership with Amazon Web Services (AWS).

IENAI collaborations

The company said that – this year and next – it expects to “kick-start a number of key collaborations with established players in the market”, as well as progressing its current ESA projects involving Athena and 360.

Images: ESA

See also: Pulsar Fusion tests electric propulsion for larger orbital payloads