Brunswick-based bluShift Aerospace says it's aiming to reach suborbital flight sometime next year.
Founder Sascha Deri says bluShift wants to initially cater to nanosatellites, which are spacecraft smaller than microwave ovens.
"Right now, the only way for them to get to space was to ride in basically large container ships to space — think about like SpaceX, very large rockets. So these really tiny satellites … don't get any sort of priority to go when and where they want to go into space," he says. "So we saw a real opportunity to be that small rocket company that is providing the ability, this ability for the satellites be placed exactly where they want to be put into orbit."
The company recently received almost $2.5 million in grants and seed funding. That money will go towards finalizing the prototype of their MAREVL hybrid engine to be used in bluShift's suborbital flight attempt next year.
"This funding will be used to finish off the testing of that engine, and to begin the engineering required to make those [MAREVL] engines usable as boosters," said Deri in a follow-up interview. "It's just opening up a new market for us where we can just sell the engines in addition to doing our suborbital launches down the road."
Deri says the hybrid rocket engine will cost half that of a traditional engine, and that the company plans to perform a full duration burn test with the engine in the upcoming weeks. Deri added bluShift already has five customers signed up to send payloads into space and wants to fundraise another $3 million-$4 million by the end of this year.
