Rethinking How We Reach Orbit

For decades, the economics of spaceflight have been dictated by one unavoidable fact: rockets have to carry their own fuel. Every kilogram of propellant needed to escape Earth’s gravity is a kilogram that isn’t payload, and for small satellites that math has never worked in the customer’s favor. Dedicated launches remain expensive, rideshare missions mean waiting in line for someone else’s flight plan, and the small satellite operators driving the next wave of space innovation are left choosing between cost, schedule, and control.

ExVel Systems was founded to change that equation. Instead of relying on a rocket to do all the work, we use an electromagnetic launch system to do the heavy lifting during the first phase of flight, accelerating a protected payload to hypersonic speed before a compact rocket stage takes over to complete the trip to orbit. The result is a launch architecture that needs a fraction of the propellant, a fraction of the structure, and a fraction of the cost of a conventional small launch vehicle, without asking customers to compromise on orbit selection or wait months for a launch slot.

How the System Works

At the core of ExVel’s approach is a electromagnetic accelerator that launches a payload package to several times the speed of sound before it ever ignites a rocket motor. A protective shell shields the payload during the highest-stress portion of ascent, then separates cleanly once the vehicle has cleared the thickest part of the atmosphere. From there, a small solid rocket motor, already moving at a significant fraction of orbital velocity, finishes the job of reaching low Earth orbit.

Because so much of the velocity is provided before the rocket stage ever lights, that stage can be dramatically smaller than what a conventional rocket would need. Less propellant means less structure, less structure means more room for payload, and the entire system becomes both cheaper to build and cheaper to fly.

Built on Proven Foundations

ExVel isn’t asking anyone to take a leap of faith on unproven physics. Every major subsystem in our architecture has already been independently demonstrated in real-world programs, just never combined in this way.

High-acceleration electromagnetic launch has been tested at the multi-megajoule scale in naval research programs for over a decade. Payloads surviving extreme launch accelerations is old news to the artillery and tank-round world, and more recently to companies exploring kinetic launch for space applications, at accelerations far beyond what our system requires. The energy storage technology behind our launcher, high-speed flywheels, is already deployed commercially for grid stabilization, and separating a protective shell cleanly at high speed is a solved problem in both munitions and missile defense applications. Solid rocket propulsion, meanwhile, is about as mature as aerospace technology gets.

What’s new isn’t any single piece, it’s how the pieces come together into a single, purpose-built system for getting small satellites to orbit affordably and on the customer’s schedule.

Why It Matters

Small satellite operators building constellations, testing new technology, or bringing a commercial idea to orbit shouldn’t have to choose between waiting a year for a rideshare seat or paying rocket-scale prices for a fraction of a rocket’s payload. By fundamentally rethinking how the first phase of launch is powered, ExVel is working to make dedicated, on-demand access to orbit an option for missions that could never justify it before, without reinventing the parts of aerospace that already work.

We’re not chasing a moonshot. We’re combining technologies that already exist, in a way that hasn’t been tried, to solve a problem the entire small satellite industry is waiting to see solved.