Halifax-based RF technology company Aethera Technologies Ltd. has announced that they’ve made an “undisclosed minority equity investment” in Houston’s Ad Astra Rocket Company.
The two companies have a long-standing relationship and contextualizes Ad Astra’s other recent announcement that they’ve received two NASA contracts for development of their VASIMR engine.
“VASIMR” is an acronym for their “VAriable Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket,” a rocket engine currently in development at Ad Astra. The engine is an electrothermal thruster—essentially an electric rocket engine—which uses RF waves to turn gas into a superheated plasma which is then contained, accelerated and ejected by strong magnetic fields.
This form of propulsion uses a significant amount of energy, but a tiny fraction of the propellants needed for traditional chemical thrusters. Yet it may be more scalable than current ion engines, and may be able to use a wider variety of potential fuels. Development is ongoing, with Ad Astra saying last year that they’ve been performing heavy testing and are looking to achieve a Technology Readiness Level of 6 soon.
As detailed in previous SpaceQ coverage, Aethera is a major contributor to Ad Astra and VASIMR. They provide the custom solid state Ion Cyclotron Heating (ICH) RF Power Processing Unit (PPU) used in VASIMR, which was focused on “high power density…with extremely high efficiency” according to their marketing materials. They have also been developing the Helicon RF-PPU also used in VASIMR, which (according to Aethera) will be “ready for delivery this year.”
The development and testing of the PPU was supported by Ad Astra and the Canadian Space Agency, as part of the Space Technology and Development Program (STDP)’s AO4 awards in 2018-2019. The PPU was tested in vacuum in 2020 and was used in VASIMR’s 88-hour-long endurance test in 2021. The NASA awards were focused on developing and maturing the RF couplers that Aethera’s PPUs would be powering.
In an email exchange with SpaceQ, Aethera Founder and Director Charles Schue said that they “chose this point to invest [in Ad Astra] because we expect the adoption of space-based electric propulsion to be as disruptive as that of EV technology here on Earth, and we wanted to be part of that disruption.”
He believes that the potential combination of efficiency and scalability seen in the VASIMR could be a game changer even compared to other ion thrusters, noting that “the VASIMR outperformed the Hall Effect Thruster by an order of magnitude” in NASA’s NextStep program. He said “the VASIMR is alone in its ability to deliver high power, using less expensive propellant.”
Schue joined Ad Astra’s board in 2021, further reflecting the tight connection between the two companies.
In the release, Aethera President Kirk Zwicker echoed that sentiment regarding VASIMR’s potential compared to other electric engines, saying that “VASIMR provides the high power necessary to move objects with large mass in cislunar space, and beyond, something no other electric propulsion technology can deliver.”
Ad Astra CEO (and former NASA Astronaut) Franklin Chang Díaz said they are “excited to welcome Aethera to our investor family,” adding that “we are also proud to be working with Canada and thankful for the support that nation has provided to make this technology possible.”