Is space transport at the dawn of a revolution? This is what the Ile-de-France start-up Gama, which is developing a solar sail, wants to believe.
Gama wants to give a new impetus to space transport. The French start-up has developed a solar sail that might send small satellites to explore distant celestial bodies at distances never before traveled by objects sent by man into space.
To make this ambition a reality, the company has just completed a funding round of 2 million euros with the CNES (National Center for Space Studies), Bpifrance, Kima Ventures, Xavier Niel’s fund, and Possible Ventures. From business angels also participated in the operation, like Nicolas Pinto (Apple), Marie Outtier (Twitter) and Romain Afflelou (Cosmo Connected).
Sunlight to go faster and further
The project was born in 2020, during a meeting between Thibaud Elzière, co-founder of the start-up studio eFounders and Fotolia, and Louis de Gouyon Matignon, a space law student. Joined by Andrew Nutter, space enthusiast and investor in several deep-tech start-ups, they then began to imagine a solar sail in order to use sunlight as a source of energy to move it forward in space.
In other words, it is a question of using photonic propulsion, which is more efficient and less polluting over long distances than the electrical and chemical propulsion systems currently used to travel in space, and moreover over a short period of time. With photonic propulsion, the acceleration is thus increasingly strong as the object that benefits from it (the solar sail) approaches the Sun. According to simulations carried out by Gama, a solar sail might reach 14,000 km/h following 100 days and even 240,000 km/h three years later. Beyond speed and distance, this technology would make it possible to carry out space missions for 20 million euros.
First mission in October 2022… then Venus in 2025?
The solar sail designed by the French start-up, which has around ten engineers, takes the form of four trapezoidal petals of just under 20 m² each, for a total of 73.3 m². Made from ultra-thin aluminized plastic, it is 50 times thinner than a human hair and fits in the size of a shoebox. This will also be the size of the module in which it will experience its baptism of fire at the end of the year.
Folded, it will weigh only 11 kilos when it takes off for space using a SpaceX rocket, which will leave from Florida next October. During this first mission, the sail will be deployed at an altitude of 550 kilometers. If this inaugural test proves conclusive, a second mission will take place in 2023 or 2024 to deploy a wider sail and test the on-board navigation software, developed in-house. Called “Sextant”, the latter might even be marketed in the form of a term subscription, a practice that Thibaud Elzière knows well with eFounders, which propels start-ups developing SaaS solutions for companies.
After these first two missions, if everything goes without a hitch, a third is planned for 2025 to send a 400 to 500 m² sail to distant celestial bodies. Venus seems to be the first destination planned for this deadline. Before March?
