Oxygen/Hydrogen Thruster Development for Space Mobility and Sustainability

Mobility is now seen as essential to make money in space. Spacecraft must move to their target orbits, move to orient themselves, move to avoid collisions and move to de-orbit at the end of their lives. By the end of the decade, every spacecraft launched will have at least one mobility thruster.

However, the current selection of thrusters for spacecraft are too slow, run out of propellant too quickly, and frequently use toxic propellants that are facing regulatory headwinds. Spacecraft manufacturers are forced to make an uncomfortable choice between low thrust electric propulsion or low performance chemical propulsion.

Protolaunch is developing a self-contained propulsion system using the highest performing chemical propellants -- oxygen/hydrogen. Protolaunch's innovative ignition technology and patent pending pressurisation and storage technology allow these propellants to be used in SmallSats for the first time.

This project seeks to design, build and test a breadboard engine of the Protolaunch thruster powered by oxygen and hydrogen propellants and will de-risk the critical innovative technologies.

Protolaunch's self contained thrusters give spacecraft:

* **Faster manoeuvres** -- speeding up time to revenue generation.
* **Greater propellant lifetimes** -- increasing revenue generating lifetime.
* **Non-toxic propellants** -- reducing ground handling costs and enabling new mission architectures.