Amazon made same-day delivery the benchmark on Earth. Impulse Space is pitching a similar concept for satellites bound for geostationary orbit about 22,000 miles above Earth, compressing what is typically a months-long transit into a matter of hours.
In the span of a week, the in-space propulsion startup announced a trio of deals aiming to unlock geostationary orbit (GEO) for commercial and defense users. That includes a demonstration mission with defense contractor Anduril planned for 2026; a transportation deal with GEO communications startup Astranis in 2027; and a multi-launch agreement to carry Infinite Orbits’ servicing satellites to GEO starting the same year.
Tom Mueller founded Impulse in 2021 after nearly two decades leading propulsion at SpaceX, where he led development of the Merlin and Raptor engines. He left SpaceX in 2020 and started Impulse to build out in-space transport services focused on last-mile delivery in low Earth orbit (LEO) — which is typically 100 to 1,200 miles above Earth — and ultra-fast satellite transport to GEO.
The common denominator across these missions is Helios, Impulse’s methane-oxygen kick stage. A kick stage is essentially a small rocket engine system that rides on a larger rocket and then fires its own engine – in this case, a powerful engine called Deneb – to propel spacecraft to their final destination.
Helios is meant to be the “same day” courier from LEO to higher altitude orbits. If it performs as advertised, commercial operators could reach higher orbits much faster, and the Department of Defense could maneuver more quickly in an increasingly contested region of space.
GEO isn’t just far away. Getting there and operating satellites from there presents special challenges. Spacecraft must transit the high-radiation Van Allen belts — zones of charged particles trapped by Earth’s magnetic field — deal with la …