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Image Credits:Ashi Dissanayake / Spaceium
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Back in 2023 , Ashi Dissanayake , cobalt - founding father of in - distance fueling startupSpaceium , was so bootstrapped she used the surface of her clothes dryer as a desk , sticking her legs inside the drying machine . Her computer was perched beside Tide Pods and she was border by disembodied robotic arms , working of late into the Nox with her co - founder , Reza Fetanat . Back then , the distich work out of a flyspeck Ottawa flat .
The two carbon monoxide - founders bind at University of Ottawa over their mutual space fixation and team up for inquiry projects . “ We were building the rockets , rocket structure , propulsion organization , as well as the parachutes that would bring the rocket engine back , ” she said , add they would put sample in the rockets , shoot them up as high as 30,000 feet , and then send the data back to Canadian research lab .
As they work on research , Dissanayake and Fetanat realized that “ the bragging chokepoint ” in the industry was the lack of refueling choice in space . the right way now , a spacecraft has to be equipped with all the fuel it needs for a mission . “ And after the mission ends , the spacecraft basically becomes space detritus , ” she said .
For longer missions or recondite space commission — like , say , colonizing Mars — caller will ask to have access to fuel in distance . “ Our self-aggrandizing mission would be to build the space super highway , where we have multiple refueling stations where a ballistic capsule can hail loading dock , refill , and go about their direction , ” she said .
Spaceium is not the only company with this dream : Orbit Fabis also play on in - space refueling , and has a several - year head teacher start . to boot , Nipponese aerospace company Astroscale come through a $ 25.5 million U.S. Space Force contract to establish a fueling fomite .
But Dissanayake feel positive they have a free-enterprise vantage . “ We have actually develop a very alone system where we can store the fuel for longer period of time , which was actually not done before , ” she said , correct to give further detail .
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Dissanayake has a long fashion to go , but she trust one day she can take a trip-up up to space , look out into the abysm , “ and then actually see our stations from where we are . ”
