Application · Below ~300 km

Very low Earth orbit

Below about 300 km, propulsion is not an occasional manoeuvre. It runs against atmospheric drag for the life of the mission, on a platform with almost no margin to spare.

MHz Labs, Seville

Low Earth orbit is a crowded, decaying environment

The mission. Near-continuous thrust against drag, high duty cycle, on a platform where every kilogram and every watt of waste heat competes with the payload.
Why RF fits. RF plasma sources, air-breathing concepts included, suit this regime, and need an efficient, compact RF power chain to fly.
Where we fit. We build the RF PPU, not the thruster: platform bus power to matched RF drive, power throttling for variable drag, protection sized for the plasma. Same unit serves helicon thrusters in higher orbits.

Crowded, and continuously decaying · the case for on-board propulsion

Public references

JAXA's SLATS (Tsubame) demonstrated sustained operation near 180 km using ion propulsion for drag make-up. Air-breathing electric propulsion research at IRS Stuttgart and elsewhere targets the same regime with RF plasma sources. For the power electronics background, see the technical guide to RF PPUs.

Flying an RF thruster in very low orbit?

Tell us the drag make-up power, the duty cycle and the platform mass budget.

Talk to our engineering team