{"id":338581,"date":"2017-04-18T03:30:10","date_gmt":"2017-04-17T19:30:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/techcrunch.com\/?p=1477542"},"modified":"2017-04-18T03:30:10","modified_gmt":"2017-04-17T19:30:10","slug":"accelerating-the-future-of-space-technology","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/people.utm.my\/asmawisham\/accelerating-the-future-of-space-technology\/","title":{"rendered":"Accelerating the future of space technology"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Alice Lloyd George<\/span> Contributor<\/span><\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

Alice Lloyd George<\/a> is an investor at RRE Ventures<\/a> and the host of Flux<\/a>, a series of podcast conversations with leaders in frontier technology.<\/p>\n

More posts by this contributor:\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

At this moment there are over 500,000 pieces of space debris hurtling around the Earth. Traveling at speeds of up to 40,000 kilometers per hour, a satellite collision with these fragments is enough to damage and even destroy our communications networks<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Accion Systems is building the technology to prevent that.\u00a0The company, which spun out of MIT in 2014, manufactures ion engines that enable satellites to maneuver in space and avoid these collisions.<\/p>\n

In an interview for Flux<\/a>, I sat down with Natalya Bailey, the co-founder and CEO of Accion Systems. She reveals how the company is able to meet the needs of the burgeoning small satellite industry and why legacy manufacturers can\u2019t keep up, how she\u2019s handled the jump from academia to business, and what she\u2019s learned from Bill Swanson of Raytheon about managing a team.<\/p>\n

Bailey also discusses how the Apollo mission helped push computing forward, why space exploration is critical for our survival, and how to get more women into STEM fields.<\/p>\n

An excerpt of the conversation is published below.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Natalya Bailey, co-founder and chief executive of Accion Systems, holds a 1U CubeSat prototype with four microthruster modules.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

AMLG:<\/strong> Today I\u2019m excited to welcome Natalia Bailey, founder and CEO of Accion Systems. Accion was founded three years ago\u200a\u2014\u200athey build liquid ion systems that power the electric propulsion in satellites. It\u2019s a technology that could change the dynamics in space by enabling satellites to maneuver and reposition, extending their lifetime, which is pretty huge, and could be used for a lot of missions including (one day) interplanetary exploration. Welcome Natalya, great to have you here.<\/p>\n

NB:<\/strong> Thanks for having me on the show.<\/p>\n

AMLG:<\/strong> Let\u2019s jump in. I\u2019d love to hear how you came to found Accion\u200a\u2014\u200a how did you get where you are now?<\/p>\n

NB:<\/strong> My path to founding Accion started with my interest in studying space propulsion and doing research in the field. That brought me to MIT for my PhD in aeronautics and astronautics.<\/p>\n

Actually prior to starting there, I was doing my masters at Duke and tried to start a rocket company, with different technology but similar ideas, and that company kind of imploded. I thought that would be my last go at entrepreneurship and startups, so I went to do my PhD and thought I would end up as a professor or at a research lab. And I started working on this new type of ion engine. We ended up getting a lot of interest from industry. The timing was phenomenal\u200a\u2014\u200aas we were testing proof of concept of this technology the whole industry was getting more interested in smaller satellites. There was this huge technology gap as far as propulsion goes and we were working on exactly the thing that could fill that gap. We had some of the big aerospace companies, the Lockheeds and the Boeings of the world, coming to MIT and trying to license the technology or buy systems from MIT. My research advisor remembered that I had tried to start a company once before so he knew I had entrepreneurial leanings and suggested I try again.<\/p>\n

It was in 2012 that my lab mate and I decided to spin out, so we formed a placeholder company to grab the IP. Then I defended my PhD and he dropped out, and we officially spun out in 2014 and hit the ground running.<\/p>\n

AMLG: Were you surprised by all the interest coming from these big companies\u200a\u2014\u200athe Lockheeds, the Boeings? Did you have to ward them off? Was it tempting to license out all the core tech, or did you feel a huge relief that you knew you\u2019d hit on the right opportunity?<\/strong><\/p>\n

NB: Looking back it feels like a pretty clear sign of product market fit. I think it was Marc Andreessen or Ben Horowitz who said, if the market really wants a technology it will pull it out of a company. So even if the team is inexperienced and moving slowly and there are other challenges, if the market really wants something, that strong force can make it happen. We also still live under the fantastical notion that no one out there can necessarily manufacture these systems better than we can, because they\u2019re non-traditional for aerospace. There aren\u2019t established manufacturing plants or processes at a Lockheed that could make these technologies better than we can. So that was a neat position to be in.<\/p>\n

AMLG: It seems crazy that they don\u2019t have this capability. Is it just too niche for them to allocate resources? What\u2019s the advantage of being a startup doing this?<\/strong><\/p>\n

NB: The technology itself is very different, and the manufacturing. We leverage MEMs fabrication techniques\u200a<\/a>\u2014\u200athe same manufacturing lines that are used to make Intel computer processors\u200a\u2014\u200awe use those to make our thruster chips. A Lockheed, who wouldn\u2019t traditionally be making computer processors, doesn\u2019t have those capabilities set up.<\/p>\n

AMLG: So you found this specific niche that they can\u2019t tackle. For listeners that don\u2019t know what a propulsion system on a satellite does, can you explain why it\u2019s so important?<\/strong><\/p>\n

NB: The main application is for onboard propulsion systems, that\u2019s what we\u2019re working on. That\u2019s different from launching from the surface of the Earth. We deal with when the satellite\u2019s already in space. If you look at the progression of a mission, a satellite is launched into orbit on a big bulky rocket that\u2019s not very precise, so first it will have to reposition itself to get where it actually intended to go.<\/p>\n

Then over the lifetime of the mission, there are always small disturbances pulling the satellite off of its intended track. It has to correct for those, like gravity and atmospheric drag and other perturbations.<\/p>\n

You also have to budget for collision avoidance. If NASA notifies you that you\u2019re on track to collide with something, you\u2019re responsible for moving out of the way. Then at the end of a lifetime of a satellite you\u2019re also responsible for de-orbiting it. You can\u2019t leave a satellite in orbit indefinitely\u200a\u2014\u200athat\u2019s called space junk and it\u2019s a hot button topic for us. So that\u2019s one of the most typical missions, but as we start going beyond low-earth orbit, propulsion systems are also useful for transferring orbits, for reaching the moon and Mars and other interplanetary exploration missions.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

More than 500,000 pieces of space debris orbit the Earth, traveling at speeds up to 17,500 mph, fast enough for a small piece of debris to damage a satellite or a spacecraft. Here is a timelapse showing the accumulation since 1984 [Full video from European Space Agency<\/a>].<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

AMLG:<\/strong> Can you talk about the concrete applications for the first set of satellites that will be using your technology?<\/p>\n

NB: Ultimately the two main applications are imaging or earth observation and communications. Those are the two main applications commercially that we\u2019ll be addressing. Our initial batch of customers happen to be folks that can tolerate higher risk. We haven\u2019t been launching propulsion systems into space for the past 10 years like some of the more established players would like for their suppliers. So our initial batch of customers are trying to do things like take a small satellite from low-earth orbit to lunar orbit, or trying to demonstrate other novel technology or mission components that haven\u2019t been proven before. So we\u2019re focusing on those higher risk tolerance customers right now.<\/p>\n

AMLG: You mentioned interplanetary and Mars\u200a\u2014\u200aa bunch of people in the industry are complaining that SpaceX\u2019s focus on Mars colonization has pulled attention away from regular rocket launches and supporting the ecosystem of near-earth satellites, and those near-earth satellites are probably most of your customer base. What are your thoughts on that?<\/strong><\/p>\n

NB: Two thoughts on that. First, it\u2019s analogous to Apollo in the sense that when you have an incredible, audacious goal that you set out to achieve, the spin-off technologies and other challenges you have to solve along the way are actually extremely beneficial in other areas not just space. Looking at Apollo, you could even argue that some of the returns on that investment were computers in general, and everything else that came out of that program.<\/p>\n

AMLG: What did we get specifically out of Apollo in terms of computer advances?<\/strong><\/p>\n

NB: The personal computer was just starting to be thought of around that time, and in a lot of the early Apollo missions everything was done by hand calculations, then later they started to input the punch hole cards into a computer on board. It was right at that transition point to computing, and a lot of money was being funneled into developing it for Apollo. So\u00a0fans of Apollo say that computers came about because of that program.<\/a>\u00a0I think in general, setting big hairy goals for an entire nation to achieve usually ends in a lot of cool spinoff technologies.<\/p>\n

The other thing about Mars colonization is, if you think about humankind as a species, if we\u2019re around 300-400 years from now, it\u2019s probably not because we stayed put on Earth. For our long-term preservation, it\u2019s worth starting to explore other planets in the solar system and hopefully eventually beyond that.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

AMLG: Where did this interest in exploring other planets come from. You grew up in Oregon right? What was that like and how did you get interested in space?<\/strong><\/p>\n

NB: Growing up in Oregon was great. It was very outdoorsy, I don\u2019t really remember spending any time indoors. I would spend nights outside on my trampoline. In Oregon there\u2019s not a lot of light pollution so I could look at the stars. I would think about aliens and then notice these very solid specks of light moving across the sky and I realized they weren\u2019t airplanes. So I tried to figure out what they could be and realized I was watching the space station. Mostly I wanted to study aliens but my family is quite practical so I decided to combine that with math, which I loved, and ended up in aerospace engineering. I haven\u2019t looked back since.

AMLG: Were you always interested in science? Were your parents interested in science?<\/strong><\/p>\n

NB: Yeah. My dad was a biologist. I was always gathering bugs and studying them and keeping them in tanks in my bedroom until my parents found them. In school I started excelling in math and found that it came easily to me. That combined with the science and alien bit led me to engineering.

AMLG: When you talk about aliens I think of one of my favorite books by Carl Sagan\u200a\u2014\u200aContact. I don\u2019t know if you ever watched the movie or read the book, but I picture you like Ellie in that film. She\u2019s this brilliant scientist and stumbles across something big.<\/strong><\/p>\n

NB: I\u2019ve definitely seen it. I\u2019m currently making my way through Carl Sagan\u2019s original Cosmos again.<\/p>\n

AMLG: I love the original Cosmos. I\u2019m a huge Carl Sagan fan, I love his voice he\u2019s so inspiring to listen to. Talking about books, I know you\u2019re an avid reader. Did any books in particular influence you or your path to building Accion?<\/strong><\/p>\n

NB: Well I\u2019m a gigantic Harry Potter fan and a lot of things around Accion are named after various aspects of Harry Potter including the name Accion itself.<\/p>\n

AMLG: Is that the Accio spell? The beckoning spell?<\/strong><\/p>\n

NB: Yes exactly. My co-founder and I were g-chatting late one night on a weekend and looking through a glossary of Harry Potter spells trying to name the company. Accio, the summoning spell, if you add an \u201cN\u201d to the end of it, it becomes a concatenation between \u201caccelerate\u201d and \u201cion\u201d which is what we do. That\u2019s the official story of how we named the company, but really it was from the glossary of spells.<\/p>\n\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

A quote from Carl Sagan\u2019s 1980s TV Series, \u201cCosmos<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

[To continue reading, a full transcript of the conversation can be found on\u00a0Medium<\/a>.]<\/p>\n

Featured Image: John Devolle\/Getty Images<\/small><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\"\" At this moment there are over 500,000 pieces of space debris hurtling around the Earth. Traveling at speeds of up to 40,000 kilometers per hour, a satellite collision with these fragments is enough to damage and even destroy our communications networks. Accion Systems is building the technology to prevent that.\u00a0The company, which spun out of MIT in 2014, manufactures ion engines that… Read More<\/a><\/p>\n

\n<\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a> <\/img><\/a>\n<\/div>\n

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