Posted on 22 October, 2026
A satellite without propulsion stays in the orbit where the launcher left it. Satellites in a constellation, often launched together on the same flight, still have to reach their own slots, make up for atmospheric drag, move out of the way of debris when needed and leave orbit at the end of their mission. Traffic is growing fast: more than 4,000 new satellites were placed in orbit in 2025, according to the European Space Agency. In the United States, the FCC, which licenses satellites, requires all low Earth orbit satellites it authorises to be able to leave orbit no later than five years after their mission ends. In Europe, the proposed EU Space Act, now before the European Parliament and the Council, would require any satellite operating above 400 km to be able to manoeuvre, and since 2024 France has reserved specific orbits for satellites that can do so.
ThrustMe was founded in 2017 to build propulsion for a market that did not exist yet: constellations of small satellites in low Earth orbit. Developing a propulsion system takes years, and that market matured just as ThrustMe’s systems were ready to fly. Today orders are coming in faster than the whole industry can ramp up production, ThrustMe included.
ThrustMe’s customers use its propulsion at every stage of a satellite’s life. In Munich, OroraTech uses it to keep the satellites of its FOREST wildfire-detection network in the right orbits. In Denmark, GomSpace builds it into satellites on its production line and uses it to raise their orbit, test collision-avoidance manoeuvres and, at the end of the mission, leave orbit. In the United States, Astro Digital flies it on a growing number of missions for its customers. In Japan, iQPS has selected it for its QPS-SAR radar satellites, and in India PierSight and Dhruva Space have chosen it too.
“We needed a supplier able to deliver in volume and on schedule, and a system our own integration teams could install,” said Carsten Drachmann, CEO of GomSpace.
“Having 100 satellites in space equipped with our propulsion systems is a truly symbolic milestone. It shows that the space sector has entered its industrial era, with a rapidly growing market and specialist suppliers like ThrustMe scaling to meet demand. Propulsion is one of the most complex subsystems on a satellite, and customers place considerable trust in the partners they choose. We are proud and honoured to have earned that trust from so many outstanding clients,” said Ane Aanesland, CEO and founder of ThrustMe.
ThrustMe grew out of nearly ten years of research at the CNRS and École polytechnique. Dr Ane Aanesland and Dr Dmytro Rafalskyi founded the company in 2017. Three years later, ThrustMe tested its first iodine electric propulsion system in orbit, and Nature published the results in 2021. These in-orbit results earned ThrustMe the European Physical Society’s Plasma Physics Innovation Prize, for pioneering iodine-fuelled electric propulsion for satellites, and the AIAA Electric Propulsion Outstanding Technical Achievement Award, received alongside SpaceX.
ThrustMe’s next step is the JPT150, the world’s first low-power Hall thruster to run on iodine, which delivers the higher thrust and total impulse that larger satellites need. It will be tested in space for the first time in 2027 on Marble Sat-1, an Earth observation satellite built by Reflex Aerospace for Marble Imaging that has just completed its qualification testing. In September, the Élysée included it among the announcements of the International Space Summit in Paris. ThrustMe turns ten in 2027.