Follow Our Latest News

A privately-owned Chinese satellite company founded in 2016 is expanding its product line as it continues in-orbit technology demonstrations. The firm, with 70 employees working in Changsha and Beijing, has nine missions and 15 satellites in orbit. Feng Yang, CEO and founder, talked with SpaceNews about his plans for small synthetic aperture radar (SAR) satellites and the origins of the company at the Space Tech Expo Europe.

ThrustMe has launched the first ever iodine-propelled satellite. The satellite was sent into space by a Long March 4B (CZ-4B) carrier rocket from Taiyuan Satellite Launch Center in China's Shanxi Province, on 3 November 2019 at 11:22AM (Beijing time). The 6U satellite includes a propulsion system developed and built by ThrustMe. Known as the I2T5, this propulsion system uses a first-of-its-kind, non-pressurized, cold gas thruster fuelled by solid iodine. Designed with CubeSats in mind, the I2T5 will help ensure a sustainable space industry by extending the lifetime of satellite missions, and enabling collision avoidance maneuvers. In the future, ThrustMe’s other iodine based, electric propulsion systems, will additionally enable orbital changes, constellation phasing, and orbit maintenance.

The French government and BPIfrance continues supporting our R&D, for which we are extremely grateful. With the I-NOV grant we will develop our innovative RF acceleration for neutralizer free gridded ion thrusters.

Après avoir dirigé l’équipe de recherche Plasma Froid du Laboratoire de Physique au CNRS, Ane Aanesland a décidé de passer du monde de la recherche à celui de l’entrepreneuriat. En lançant ThrustMe, la chercheuse d’origine norvégienne, veut rendre l’industrie spatiale « durable ». Portrait d’une chercheuse-entrepreneure de la Deeptech.

Cubesats are becoming more and more capable — once considered a useful “toy” to educate aerospace engineers, they are now widely used for scientific research and commercial applications.

Is it possible to bring the ionosphere down to earth?

On the 21st May 2019, ThrustMe will deliver a unique plasma device to the University of Oslo, Norway. This device has a very special purpose: creating an artificial ionosphere in the laboratory here on earth.