ION-X has successfully performed the first-ever in-orbit firing of a European-developed ionic liquid electrospray thruster.
This milestone marks only the second global demonstration of this advanced propulsion technology in space, nearly a decade after the inaugural mission by BUSEK for the LISA-PATHFINDER mission in 2015. Ten years later, the ION-X demonstration is only the second occurrence worldwide of an ionic liquid electrospray firing in space—and the 1st from a European company.
On May 6th, 2025, onboard a spacecraft built by Danish satellite manufacturer Space Inventor and launched on SpaceX’s Transporter-12 mission in January of 2025, ION-X’s thruster emitted its first ion beam in Low Earth Orbit (LEO). Triggered by its onboard computer and powered by ION-X’s proprietary Power Processing Unit (PPU), the system successfully generated thrust estimated at 20 μN, with an ion beam of 200μA at 5kV. Tests in orbit are still on-going and this is already a significant achievement for the company.
ION-X’s compact and scalable thruster is tailored to meet the growing demand for high-precision, low-power propulsion systems. It addresses critical use cases such as constellation deployment, collision avoidance, and station-keeping for small satellites. Its electrospray design enables extreme miniaturization, low plume contamination, and high pointing accuracy, key performance drivers for satellite manufacturers and mission integrators.
The first flight model was integrated on the Space Inventor’s EDISON spacecraft in May of 2024, just three years after ION-X’s incorporation. With a total budget under €4 million, this was a remarkable programmatic, financial and technical achievement in the field of space propulsion.
As the EDISON mission is expected to terminate this summer, ION-X is already gearing up toward its next space missions. The second flight of the company’s thruster shall be publicly announced in the coming weeks, for a launch expected by mid-2026. This will give the opportunity to the company’s team of engineers and scientists to fly an even more sophisticated version of its propulsion system, with the aim to demonstrate increasing performances and accelerate its commercial and industrial development.
We worked really hard over the past three years to achieve these first results. I am immensely proud and grateful to the ION-X team. We could not have done it without their dedication and professionalism. There is still a lot of work to increase the performances and the reliability of our thruster but this is a clear sign that we are going in the right direction,” said Thomas Hiriart, ION-X CEO. “This achievement is the culmination of three years of intense R&D made at C2N, the nanoscience laboratory of CNRS located in Palaiseau, south of Paris. It marks a major step toward the deployment of European-made electrospray propulsion technologies for the next-generation of space missions.”
View the ION-X technology / product video by selecting the splash screen below…
About ION-X
ION-X is a French startup founded in May 2021 by Jacques Giérak, a world-renowned expert in ion sources for nanoelectronics and Research Engineer at C2N (Nanoscience and Nanotechnology Laboratory of CNRS, Palaiseau, France). Mr. Giérak was awarded the CNRS Innovation Medal in 2023. The company was co-founded with Yves Matton, Partner at the venture builder Technofounders. ION-X develops a new electric propulsion system based on the ejection of ultra-fine, fully ionized particles, primarily designed for small satellites. This system is based on patented technology jointly developed by CNRS and CNES. ION-X is backed by Expansion, Technofounders, the European Innovation Council, Innovacom, the Ile-de-France Région and BPI France.