Dawn Aerospace

Based in the Netherlands, New Zealand, and the United States, Dawn Aerospace’s mission is to enable the next generation of space users by providing dramatically more scalable and sustainable ways to access and move around in space. Spaceplane Dawn’s suborbital and orbital rocket-powered planes operate much like a fleet of aircraft, taking off and landing horizontally at airports. Mk-II is a suborbital plane designed to fly 100 km above the Earth and aims to be the first vehicle to access space multiple times per day. An active test flight program of the Mk-II Aurora spaceplane demonstrator has seen 40+ flights completed. The vehicle serves as a technology demonstrator for the two-stage-to-orbit vehicle, the Mk-III. In-space propulsion Dawn is now a leading supplier of turnkey green propulsion systems for NanoSat, MicroSat, ESPA, and ESPA Grande-class satellites. Dawn propulsion technology often achieves superior performance than traditional hydrazine systems by using a unique, green-propellant combination; nitrous oxide and propylene. Having proven this technology on orbit for both CubeSats and small satellites, Dawn propulsion systems have now flown on Vega, Falcon 9, and Soyuz launchers.