Tag: Propulsion

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How a decades-old idea sparked a hot new space venture

Portal CEO Jeff Thornburg with vacuum chamber
Portal Space Systems CEO Jeff Thornburg checks out the vacuum chamber where space hardware is tested. (GeekWire Photo / Alan Boyle)

BOTHELL, Wash. — Before he became the CEO of Portal Space Systems, Jeff Thornburg worked for two of the world’s most innovative space-minded billionaires. Now he’s working on an idea those billionaires never thought to pursue: building a spacecraft powered by the heat of focused sunlight.

Thornburg and his teammates are aiming to make Bothell-based Portal the first commercial venture to capitalize on solar thermal propulsion, a technology studied decades ago by NASA and the U.S. Air Force. The concept involves sending a propellant through a heat exchanger, where the heat gathered up from sunlight causes it to expand and produce thrust, like steam whistling out of a teakettle.

The technology is more fuel-efficient than traditional chemical propulsion — and faster-acting than solar electric propulsion, which uses solar arrays to turn sunlight into electricity to power an ion drive. Solar thermal propulsion nicely fills a niche between those two methods to move a spacecraft between orbits. But neither NASA nor the Air Force followed up on the concept.

“They didn’t abandon it for technical reasons,” Thornburg said. At the time, it just didn’t make economic or strategic sense to take the concept any further.

What’s changed?

“Lower launch costs, coupled with additive manufacturing, are the major unlocks to bring the tech to life, and make it affordable and in line with commercial development,” Thornburg said.

Thornburg argues that it’s the right time for Portal’s spacecraft to fill a gap in America’s national security posture on the high frontier. “There was no imperative for rapid movement on orbit in the 1990s,” he said. “Only recently have the threats from our adversaries highlighted the weaknesses in current electric propulsion systems, in that they have so little thrust and can’t enable rapid mobility.”

Portal’s vision has attracted interest — and financial support — from investors and potential customers. Since its founding in 2021, the startup has raised more than $20 million in venture capital. In 2024, Portal won a commitment for $45 million in public-private funding from SpaceWERX, the innovation arm of the U.S. Space Force. And next year, Portal is due to demonstrate its hardware for the first time in orbit.

So, how did Thornburg hit upon the idea of turning a decades-old idea into reality?

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Sunlight-powered propulsion system passes a big test

Thruster glows as it undergoes testing in vacuum chamber
Portal’s heat exchanger thruster, known as Flare, fires up during a test in a vacuum chamber. (Portal Space Systems Photo)

Bothell, Wash.-based Portal Space Systems says it has successfully tested its solar thermal propulsion system at operational temperatures inside a vacuum chamber, marking a first for the commercial space industry.

The test marks a key step in the development of Portal’s 3D-printed heat exchanger thruster, known as Flare. The thruster is part of a propulsion system that converts concentrated sunlight into heat. That heat would warm up an ammonia-based propellant to produce thrust and send Portal’s Supernova satellite platform where it needs to go.

Supernova is designed to maneuver payloads quickly between orbital locations — for example, to head off close encounters between a growing number of commercial satellites, or to respond to space-based threats from rivals such as China and Russia.

NASA and the U.S. Air Force have experimented with solar thermal propulsion since the 1960s, but Portal is the first commercial venture to capitalize on the concept. Solar thermal propulsion would make Supernova more maneuverable than traditional spacecraft — with the ability to change orbits within hours or days, rather than weeks or months.

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Portal raises $17.5M for spacecraft powered by sun’s heat

Illustration: Portal Space Systems' Supernova space vehicle in orbit
An artist’s conception shows the Supernova spacecraft in orbit. (Portal Space Systems Illustration)

Bothell, Wash.-based Portal Space Systems says it has raised $17.5 million in seed funding to accelerate the development of its Supernova space vehicle, which aims to harness the heat of the sun to power rapid-response maneuvers in orbit.

The oversubscribed investment round was led by AlleyCorp, with participation from Mach33, FUSE, First In, TFX, Offline Ventures. Atypical and other strategic investors. Portal said the funding will support the first full-scale demonstration of Supernova, with launch scheduled for mid-2026.

“Our vision is to provide next-gen spacecraft that today’s space operations demand and our nation deserves,” Portal CEO Jeff Thornburg said today in a news release. “This funding is a testament to the increasing recognition that maneuverability at will is the critical need in both defense and commercial space operations.”

Supernova will make use of a solar thermal propulsion system, with large, lightweight reflectors that focus the sun’s rays on a heat exchanger. When an ammonia-based propellant passes through the heat exchanger, it rapidly builds up pressure and produces thrust.

Thornburg said Supernova can “deliver the performance of nuclear thermal propulsion without the burden of launching a reactor.” The system is designed to push Supernova and its payloads from, say, low Earth orbit to a geostationary orbit in a matter of hours. In contrast, it might take a traditional space propulsion system weeks or months to execute a similar set of maneuvers, according to Portal.

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Portal provides a sneak peek at solar propulsion system

Ribbon-cutting ceremony at Portal Space Systems
VIPs cut the ribbon at Portal Space Systems’ HQ in Bothell, Wash. From left: U.S. Rep. Suzan DelBene; Portal co-founders Prashaanth Ravindran, Jeff Thornburg and Ian Vorbach; and Bothell Mayor Mason Thompson. (Credit: Portal Space Systems)

BOTHELL, Wash. — From the outside, Portal Space Systems’ headquarters looks like a standard-issue office space in a Bothell business park. But inside, the Portal team is working to harness the heat of the sun, to speed up how spacecraft get around.

“Think about it as finally bringing what you see in Star Trek into reality in orbit, to actually move spacecraft the way Hollywood had originally intended,” Jeff Thornburg, Portal’s CEO and co-founder, said at today’s ribbon-cutting ceremony for the 8,000-square-foot development lab and HQ.

The hardware that’s spread across Portal’s lab tells you that the four-year-old venture is no typical business-park tenant: In one corner, there’s a gleaming vacuum chamber where components for Portal’s solar thermal propulsion system are being tested. In another corner, a 3D printer stands ready to turn out the parts for subscale test models of the system’s heat-exchanger thruster.

Portal plans to build the system into its Supernova satellite platform. Supernova is designed to use foldable mirrors to focus the sun’s rays onto a heat exchanger. When ammonia passes through the heat exchanger, it rapidly builds up pressure and produces thrust.

Thornburg said the system provides several advantages over traditional rocket thrusters. For example, there’s no need for oxidizers or hard-to-handle cryogenic fuels. “We’re not burning anything,” Thornburg said. “We’re just concentrating the solar energy.”

The biggest advantage is that Supernova should be able to push itself and its attached payload into different orbits much more quickly than your typical spacecraft. “It has the ability to maneuver like nothing else that exists in orbit, which means it can go from low Earth orbit or medium Earth orbit to geostationary orbits within hours or a day,” Thornburg said. “Or it can move from one orbit to another quickly to accomplish a commercial or a defense mission with speeds that typically take weeks and months.”

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Farewell, Rocket.com: L3Harris takes over Aerojet

Aerojet Rocketdyne Redmond facility
Aerojet Rocketdyne engineer Matt Dawson processes rocket engines in Redmond, Wash. (Aerojet Rocketdyne Photo)

Florida-based L3Harris today announced that it has completed its acquisition of Aerojet Rocketdyne, two days after the Federal Trade Commission gave its OK for the deal.

The acquisition, which was valued at $4.7 billion when the agreement was announced last December, adds Aerojet’s expertise in rocket propulsion systems to L3Harris’ portfolio of space and defense technologies.

“I’m thrilled to welcome more than 5,000 employees to the L3Harris team today,” L3Harris’ chair and CEO, Christopher Kubasik, said in a news release. “With national security at the forefront, we’re combining our resources and expertise with Aerojet Rocketdyne’s propulsion and energetics capabilities to ensure that the Department of Defense and civil space customers can address critical mission needs globally.”

Going forward, Aerojet Rocketdyne will be known as “Aerojet Rocketdyne, an L3Harris Technologies company.” The upward-swooping rocket in Aerojet’s logo has been replaced by L3Harris’ buckyball logo, and Aerojet’s main internet domains — Aerojet.com and Rocket.com — now redirect to L3Harris.com.

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DARPA and NASA pick Lockheed Martin for nuclear rocket

Illustration: DRACO nuclear-powered spacecraft
An artist’s conception shows Lockheed Martin’s nuclear-powered spacecraft. (Lockheed Martin Illustration)

NASA and the Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency have selected Lockheed Martin and BWX Technologies to move forward with development of a nuclear thermal rocket, or NTR, that could blaze a trail for future missions to the moon and Mars.

The Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations, or DRACO, is slated for launch in 2027.

“The DRACO program aims to give the nation leap-ahead propulsion capability,” Tabitha Dodson, DARPA’s program manager for the effort, said today in a news release. “An NTR achieves high thrust similar to in-space chemical propulsion but is two to three times more efficient. With a successful demonstration, we could significantly advance humanity’s means for going faster and farther in space and pave the way for the future deployment for all fission-based nuclear space technologies.”

Dodson told reporters that NASA and DARPA will go 50-50 on the $499 million cost of the project. The two agencies have been working together on the rocket development effort since January.

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Aerojet Rocketdyne wins $67M award for Orion thrusters

Orion making a lunar flyby
An artist’s conception shows the Orion spacecraft’s main engine firing during a lunar flyby. (NASA Illustration)

Aerojet Rocketdyne says it’s received a $67 million contract award from Lockheed Martin to provide propulsion systems for the Orion spacecraft that’ll carry astronauts to the moon during three missions planned for the 2030s.

The contract option for NASA’s Artemis 6, 7 and 8 missions follows up on Aerojet’s work on earlier missions in the Artemis program — including the uncrewed Artemis 1 mission that flew around the moon last year, and the history-making Artemis 3 mission that’s due to put a crew on the lunar surface in the mid-2020s.

“We’re proud to be part of a team that has demonstrated the ability to safely and efficiently carry astronauts on future Artemis missions, effectively ushering in an exciting new generation of human spaceflight,” Aerojet Rocketdyne CEO and President Eileen Drake said today in a news release.

Aerojet says the contract will be managed and performed out of the company’s facility in Redmond, Wash. Work will also be conducted at Aerojet facilities in Alabama and Virginia.

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Nuclear deep-space probe gets a new boost from NASA

Illustration: Nyx spacecraft with radioisotope-powered propulsion system
An artist's conception shows a probe with a radioisotope-powered propulsion system. (USNC-Tech Illustration)

Seattle-based USNC-Tech has gotten the green light from NASA to continue development of a rapid-response spacecraft that would use a nuclear-powered propulsion system for deep-space exploration.

The company’s proposed Nyx mission is one of six projects receiving Phase II grants from the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts program, or NIAC. Each grant provides up to $600,000 of support over the course of two years to follow up on Phase I NIAC projects.

USNC-Tech, the advanced-technology arm of Ultra Safe Nuclear Corp., has been working on a next-generation radioisotope thermoelectric generator known as EmberCore. RTGs are basically batteries powered by the decay of radioactive material. They’ve been used for decades for missions ranging from Apollo moonshots to Mars rover treks and deep-space odysseys. EmberCore promises to provide 10 times as much electrical power as the current generation of RTGs.

For the Nyx mission, USNC-Tech envisions adapting EmberCore for an electric propulsion system that could propel a spacecraft to extremely high speeds. “The spacecraft architecture is capable of incredible delta-V on the order of 50-100 km/s,” USNC-Tech’s Christopher Morrison says in the company’s proposal. That would translate to 110,000 to 220,000 mph.

Such spacecraft could theoretically catch up with mysterious interstellar objects like ‘Oumuamua, which zoomed through our solar system in 2017. Other potential missions include detection of objects in the far-flung Kuiper Belt, parallax microlensing to look for free-floating planets, and fast trips beyond the solar system’s zodiacal glow.

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How power plays could open new frontiers in space

Illustration: Spacecraft with nuclear thermal propulsion system
An artist’s conception shows a nuclear thermal propulsion system at work in orbit (USNC-Tech Illustration)

As more and more hardware goes into Earth orbit, and eventually to the moon and Mars, where will the power to run all those machines come from?

That’s one of the questions under consideration at a State of the Space Industrial Base workshop that’s being conducted this week at Seattle’s Museum of Flight.

The workshop, hosted by Space Northwest, is bringing together government, academic and commercial leaders to assess the state of advanced power and propulsion for space missions, as well as the outlook for a Department of Defense initiative known as Hybrid Space Architecture.

Input from the workshop will be combined with insights gained at two other workshops in Florida and New Mexico to help the Pentagon’s Defense Innovation Unit produce its annual report about the space industry’s potential contributions to sustaining America’s leadership on the final frontier.

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NASA and DARPA team up on nuclear rocket program

Illustration: DRACO nuclear rocket in space
An artist’s conception shows a nuclear-powered demonstration rocket in space. (DARPA Illustration)

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency has taken on NASA as a partner for a project aimed at demonstrating a nuclear-powered rocket that could someday send astronauts to Mars.

DARPA had already been working with commercial partners — including Blue Origin, the space venture created by Amazon founder Jeff Bezos, as well as Seattle-based Ultra Safe Nuclear Technologies, or USNC-Tech — on the Demonstration Rocket for Agile Cislunar Operations program, also known as DRACO. USNC-Tech supported Blue Origin plus another team led by Lockheed Martin during an initial round of DRACO design work.

Now DARPA and NASA will be working together on the next two rounds of the DRACO program, which call for a commercial contractor to design and then build a rocket capable of carrying a General Atomics fission reactor safely into space for testing. The current plan envisions an in-space demonstration in fiscal year 2027.

“With the help of this new technology, astronauts could journey to and from deep space faster than ever – a major capability to prepare for crewed missions to Mars,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said today in a news release.

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