SAN FRANCISCO – U.K. electric propulsion startup Magdrive announced $10.5 million in seed funding Feb. 25 and plans to open a U.S. subsidiary in Los Angeles.
With the recent investment, Magdrive also plans to build a U.K. manufacturing facility and conduct on-orbit tests of high-power electric plasma thrusters. A Magdrive Rogue thruster is scheduled to launch on D-Orbit’s ION Satellite Carrier, sent aloft in June.
“We want to make sure that flight goes off without a hitch,” Magdrive CEO Mark Stokes told SpaceNews. “We’ll start manufacturing sales units straight away.”
Meanwhile, Magdrive engineers will continue research and development of the Magdrive Rogue, designed to offer thrust as high as 30 millinewtons and fit in a two-unit cubesat.
“Everything is integrated, thruster head, propellant tanks, power system, which means we can deploy it as an array two by two, three by three, four by four,” Stokes said.
Magdrive will offer the Rogue propulsion systems for satellites with a mass of 10 to 400 kilograms. In addition, Magdrive is working on “a souped-up version called Magdrive Warlock,” Stokes said. “We’ll be looking to fly that one in 2026.”
Pulsed Power
Stokes, a mechanical and deep-learning engineer, founded Magdrive in 2019 with Thomas Clayson. The two met at Imperial College London, where Clayson, a plasma physicist and pulsed-power engineer, earned a PhD in plasma physics.
They bonded over the idea of “taking the lessons of pulsed power and scaling them down to be used for satellite propulsion systems,” Stokes said.
In its Los Angeles subsidiary, Magdrive will focus on “business development and marketing, so we can hit our stride as we transfer from being an R&D outfit to being a commercially focused R&D and manufacturing outfit,” Stokes said.
The key to Magdrive thruster performance is metal propellant, Stokes said. “It allows us to have the high specific impulse of ion thrusters with a magnitude improvement in thrust and a magnitude reduction in volume and mass.”
With additional thrust, satellites will be able to perform “high-cadence avoidance maneuvers in low-Earth orbit and sustained rendezvous operations for satellite servicing or inspection,” Stokes said. Over the long term, the capability will lead to “in-space manufacturing for larger structures” and, potentially, propellant made from recycled space debris or asteroid mining, he added.
For military agencies, Madrive thrusters promise “stochastic movement to make defense satellites essentially untraceable and invisible,” Stokes said.
U.S. and U.K. Investors
“Magdrive’s technology has tremendous potential to change the game in space propulsion” by offering improved longevity and maneuverability in a small form factor,” Harald Nieder, general partners for Zurich-based redalpine, which led the seed round, said in a statement. “Propulsion is literally driving the emerging space economy.”
Balerion Space Ventures, Alumni Ventures and Founders Fund contributed to the latest investment round alongside Outsided Ventures, 7percent Ventures and Entrepreneur First.
“We’re thrilled to support MagDrive in developing next-generation space propulsion systems,” said Balerion partner Dan Wallman. “This groundbreaking technology has the potential to play a pivotal role in commercializing space during the post-Starship era.”
Magdrive raised $2 million in a 2020 pre-seed round led by Founders Fund. The company also has received more than $10 million from the U.K. Space Agency and European Space Agency and other government agencies.
“Magdrive represents the next generation of spacecraft propulsion, turning humanity’s grand ambitions in space into a reality with megaconstellations, asteroid mining, in-space servicing, assembly and manufacturing,” Stokes said in a statement.
