Pangea Aerospace closes a EUR 3M Seed round (USD 3.6M) to test aerospike rocket engine: a cost-saving, 3D printed and reusable engine.

The world first Methalox 3D printed aerospike engine

aerobd.news : The European space start-up Pangea Aerospace raised €3 million to close its seed round. The round has been led by Inveready and backed up by Primo space, Dozen Investments, E2MC and CDTI. The capital raised will be used to additively manufacture and test the first engine of this kind and work towards a commercial-ready aerospike engine with higher thrust.

Pangea Aerospace, a leading European space start-up, announced the completion of its Series Seed round of €3 million (USD 3.6 million), bringing the total funding of the company to more than €6 million, including public financing. Inveready, as a lead investor, has been accompanied by CDTI Innvierte, Dozen Investments, Primo Space and E2MC. The company develops space propulsion systems based on the aerospike nozzle and a disruptive recovery system for microlaunchers.

Pangea Aerospace is developing the long sought-after aerospike nozzle for rocket engines. This type of engine can radically transform space propulsion thanks to its higher efficiency (up to 15% than currently used rocket engines), reusability capabilities and very low-cost and rapid manufacturing. The company uses the latest metallic 3D printing techniques and materials to achieve this technological prowess. Additionally, the engine uses green propellants such as liquid oxygen and liquid methane.

Pangea Aerospace will use the funding to manufacture and test several 20kN (2 ton) aerospike rocket engine demonstrators and accelerate towards commercially ready aerospike propulsion technology. The company has been working on the design of the aerospike during the past two years and has solved problems that are historically associated with aerospike engines: cooling, weight and manufacturing costs, thanks to proprietary designs and additive manufacturing. Over the last years Pangea Aerospace has developed a strong intellectual property portfolio covering its technologies. The testing of the aerospike engine, scheduled in Q3 2021 will mainly serve to validate its manufacturability, its regenerative cooling system and the use of CH4/LOX propellants in this nozzle architecture. The engine is completely manufactured in merely two pieces using a new copper alloy with excellent creep resistance and high thermal conductivity.

Borja Ballesté, Investment Manager of Inveready, said, “Since we launched our last Tech Fund in 2019, Inveready has been exploring the opportunities created by the privatization of the SpaceTech industry and its impact in the Spanish New Space ecosystem. We are thrilled to join Pangea Aerospace’s path to Space. We strongly believe that the company has found the right opportunity window and the right founding team to accomplish the challenging target of developing the world’s first 3D printed MethaLox Aerospike Engine.”

“In the value chain of the new space economy we think that the sector of new generation satellites’ launchers is a very interesting investment area. Pangea in that sector offers innovative and interesting solutions and has a young and motivated team” said Matteo Cascinari, General Partner at Primo Space Fund.

Adrià Argemí, CEO and co-founder of Pangea said “The space industry is drastically being transformed and new solutions are sought to be more competitive. The aerospike engine has been considered the holy grail of rocket propulsion for decades, but it is only now that this technology can be built and engineered, thanks to new materials and the design freedom that additive manufacturing provides.”

Since its founding in 2018, Pangea Aerospace has grown to become a team of 15 people from different nationalities. Located in Barcelona, the company develops disruptive technologies for the launch sector and has working prototypes of its propulsion and recovery technologies. The company has a proven track record of leading large projects, being the coordinator of the RRTB project of €3,1 million with partners such as Thales Alenia Space, Deimos Space, TUM, Von Karman Institute, RWTH Aachen, Heron Engineering and Toseda. The RRTB project aims at developing Pangea Aerospace’s proprietary recovery technology to reuse booster stages.

The company has already started receiving some commercial interest for its propulsion systems, and with the new investment proceeds expects to reach a TRL level that will allow the signature of its first contracts.

Pangea Aerospace is a European SME based in Barcelona that was born with the objective of disrupting the space industry with new technologies based on the aerospike nozzle and its proprietary recovery system.
More information about Pangea Aerospace: https://pangeaaerospace.com/

Inveready Asset Management, headquartered in San Sebastián, is one of Spain’s leading Venture Capital Managers. Currently, it invests in recently created technology companies through 4 specialized verticals (Information Technology, Life Sciences, Venture Debt and Hybrid financing – debt and equity – for listed companies). Inveready has 136 active companies within its portfolio and more than €400M of assets under management. Over the last 11 years this Venture Capital Manager has completed successful divestments in more than 36 companies, Playgiga and Más Móvil being the most recent. Other companies in the portfolio have been acquired by multinationals such as Intel, Symantec and Red Hat (IBM) and others have been listed on public markets such as NASDAQ or MAB. Enabling the ambitions of bold entrepreneurs has become part of their DNA.

Dozen investments is Dozen is an investment online platform, accredited by CNMV. The company was founded in 2015 by Ramon Saltor, and as partners, has Inveready, Keyword VC, and Sevenzonic. Nowadays. Dozen has raised more than 23M€ in startups like Glovo, Skitude, Pangea, or Cuideo, and has more than 22,000 members registered on the platform.

CDTI is the body of the Spanish General State Administration that supports knowledge-based innovation; advising and offering public assistance for innovation through subsidies or partially reimbursable grants. The CDTI also internationalises R&D business projects, corporate innovation of Spanish companies and organisations, and manages the Spanish participation in international R&D organizations, such as Horizon 2020 and Eureka, and in the science and space industries. In addition, through the Innvierte Economia Sostenible initiative, it supports and facilitates the capitalization of technology companies.

Primomiglio SGR S.p.A. is a technology venture capital investment firm, specialized in early stage investments. Primomiglio currently manages the Barcamper Ventures fund, the Barcamper Ventures Lazio fund in partnership with the Regione Lazio in the digital industry and the Primo Space fund which invests in the new space economy.

E2MC Ventures is a venture capital firm dedicated to the space sector, investing from the seed stage onwards globally. Our team, based in Switzerland and the U.S., possesses decades of experience in space, investment and entrepreneurship.