{"id":465399,"date":"2026-05-29T02:22:25","date_gmt":"2026-05-29T02:22:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/465399\/"},"modified":"2026-05-29T02:22:25","modified_gmt":"2026-05-29T02:22:25","slug":"exclusive-stellar-alpina-raises-4-5m-to-build-rotating-detonation-engines","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/465399\/","title":{"rendered":"Exclusive: Stellar Alpina Raises $4.5M to Build Rotating Detonation Engines"},"content":{"rendered":"

A European propulsion startup is trying to bring a new kind of thrust to the market.<\/p>\n

Switzerland\u2019s Stellar Alpina announced today that it raised a CHF3.5M ($4.5M) pre-seed funding round to support the development of rotating detonation rocket engines (RDRE). These engines can offer more efficient in-space mobility compared to traditional chemical propulsion systems\u2014at least in theory.<\/p>\n

Founderful led the round, joined by fellow Swiss VC LP&E.<\/p>\n

Shake and bake: Stellar Alpina has its early roots in a RDRE project at Switzerland\u2019s Academic Spaceflight Initiative. After four engineers with ties to the initiative founded the company in February, the team set a bold goal of completely designing and hotfiring an RDRE within 100 days. They did it in 82.<\/p>\n

Now, the plan is to test \u201cas many engines as possible,\u201d by potentially firing a new configuration every two weeks for the next year, Stellar Alpina Cofounder Victor Elliesen told Payload.<\/p>\n

The company also plans to use its pre-seed funds to hire more than a dozen employees, and build a higher-class test stand to support larger engine tests beginning next year. The goal is to complete a spaceflight-ready RDRE by 2028, but what exactly that will look like depends a lot on demand.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cOur way to commercialization is to talk to as many customers as possible, figure out where the current pain points [are]\u2014where the high maneuver is needed,\u201d Elliesen said. \u201cIt\u2019s definitely going to go beyond LEO. The question is just how fast.\u201d<\/p>\n

Zoom out: While it\u2019s still early days for RDRE tech, the benefits of detonation engines have been well-understood in academic circles for decades. Compared to traditional, chemical-propulsion engines, RDREs offer greater thermodynamic efficiency in a more compact form, while potentially offering a higher thrust-to-weight ratio.<\/p>\n

But translating those theoretical benefits from the page to the launch pad is no simple feat. Though industry has run various demonstrations, building RDRE engines at commercial scale has yet to be proven.<\/p>\n

In 2021, a team of Japanese universities, with help from JAXA<\/a>, demonstrated the first in-space RDRE engine firing.In May 2025, Venus Aerospace<\/a> completed its first test flight of an RDRE-powered small rocket.In July, WA-based startup Juno Propulsion<\/a> won a $500,000 NASA TechLeap prize to bring a RDRE to space this summer.In April, Astrobotic<\/a> said it broke the record for longest hotfire of an RDRE.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is a race, which is establishing: Who\u2019s going to figure out how much more efficient are RDREs?\u201d Elliesen said. \u201cWho says the first RDRE can\u2019t come from Europe?\u201d<\/p>\n

Update: This article was updated to include details of Venus Aerospace\u2019s RDRE flight. <\/p>\n

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Aitech Systems, the CA-based supplier of space-computing platforms, announced an upgrade to its supercomputer today that is intended to fuel the next wave of AI applications in orbit.<\/p>\n

By integrating NVIDIA\u2019s IGX Thor platform into the S-A2300 COTS AI Supercomputer, as well as future computing iterations, Aitech officials say the company is drastically expanding customers\u2019 ability to process data in orbit\u2014an important growth point as the demand for in-space computing skyrockets.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom what the customers are doing in space\u2026they\u2019re starting to push the capabilities of what the hardware can provide,\u201d Aitech General Manager Pratish Shah told Payload. \u201cThor will be there for us to allow them to push the boundaries of applications and AI processing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Keep reading<\/a><\/p>\n

Load More<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A European propulsion startup is trying to bring a new kind of thrust to the market. Switzerland\u2019s Stellar…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":465400,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[85,46,141,145],"class_list":["post-465399","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-il","tag-israel","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465399","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=465399"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/465399\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/465400"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=465399"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=465399"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=465399"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}