Helicity Space
🇺🇸 Pasadena, US · Founded 2018 · Active
Also known as HELICITYSPACE
Helicity Space is a US start-up in Pasadena, California, developing fusion propulsion for spacecraft. Its Helicity Drive is a magneto-inertial fusion concept: several plasma sources form twisted, self-organising plasmas that merge and are squeezed by a travelling magnetic compression, and the hot plasma is exhausted to produce thrust in pulses. The company argues that an engine can be useful in space at lower fusion gain than a power plant needs. It raised a $5 million seed round in December 2023 and says it has had support from the Department of Energy's INFUSE programme. The IAEA's 2022 survey lists the Helicity Drive as a planned device.
- Sector
- Fusion
- Technology
- Magneto-inertial
- Fuel
- Deuterium–deuterium
- Role
- Fusion developer, Operator
It is the operator of record for HELICITY DRIVE (planned).
Terms
- Magneto-inertial
- Compression of a magnetised plasma; sits between MCF and ICF in density and timescale.
- Deuterium–deuterium
- Deuterium only. Needs far higher temperature than D-T, but the fuel is abundant in seawater and no tritium breeding is required. It is not neutron-free: about half of D-D reactions release a 2.45 MeV neutron, and the tritium made by the other half can fuse in turn, releasing 14.1 MeV neutrons.