Pale Blue

Japanese start-up company providing water propulsion systems for sustainable space development & utilization.

• Blue succeeded in operating the water vapor propulsion system (resistojet) in low earth orbit. Pale Blue’s propulsion system was installed on “EYE,” a nano-satellite for STAR SPHERE Project, and tested for the first time in space.  The propulsion system operated for approximately 2 minutes on March 3rd 2023, and the company confirmed successful thrust from the obtained data.
• Announced a contract Aug 2023 to supply water vapor thrusters for South Korea’s Yonsei University.
  • For a pair of six-unit cubesats. The cubesats are designed for a formation flight experiment that includes an optical communications demonstration.
  • In addition to the Resistojet thruster, Pale Blue is developing an Ion thruster and a Hybrid thruster. The company’s Ion Hall-effect thruster is likely to reach orbit for the first time in 2024 or 2025.
• Development of Water Gridded Ion Thruster for Small Satellites: Toward On-Orbit Demonstration, SmallSat 2023.
• A 100 W-Class Water-Vapor Hall Thruster for Constellations and Space Explorations by SmallSats, SmallSat 2023.
• On-Orbit Demonstration of the Water Resistojet Propulsion System on Commercial 6U-Sat SPHERE-1 EYE, SmallSat 2023.
• Pale Blue awarded up to USD 27M for MEXT’s SBIR-3, to develop and operate propulsion systems critical to space debris mitigation. 2024-02-06. The first phase amount totaling USD 8.7 million.