After just three months since their founding in February, Stellar Alpina has successfully completed an engine test and raised over 3.5 million Swiss Francs in a pre-seed funding round.
The startup, a spin off from the Academic Space Initiative Switzerland, is developing compact rotating detonation rocket engines (RDRE’s) which will make engines and their movements between orbits faster, smaller, and more efficient. As Co-Founder Victor Elliesen stated, “The space economy is moving beyond the question of access to orbit. The next challenge is movement after launch…Stellar Alpina is building the foundation for mobility in the space between worlds.” The startup marks Europe’s first commercial RDRE hot fire campaign.
The funding round was facilitated by Founderful with participation from venture capital firm LP&E whose portfolio includes many other deep-tech and aerospace companies.
Thomas Zurbuchen, Head of Science 2016-2022 at NASA and Professor at the Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich, says for Swiss technology to play a part in space exploration, Switzerland needs teams who take personal risks to reach ambitious goals, and that Stellar Alpina is that team exactly.
Stellar Alpina is yet another development in Switzerland’s prominent place in the space economy. Just a few days prior to the funding round, the European Space Agency gave permission for the Hyperspectral Biodiversity Scout (HiBiDis) to launch. HiBiDis will be launched as part of a ecological study done by the University of Zurich in collaboration with Sitael, Amos, and VITO. The team hopes to gather previously unobtainable data by imaging the earth’s surface in three different pictures. The data will be used to study forest ecosystems and biodiversity.
While not involved in space travel directly, it is impossible to deny Switzerland’s role in space development and research.