Back in 2023, Ashi Dissanayake, co-founder of space fueling startup Spaceium, became so desperate that he stuck his foot inside a clothes dryer, using its surface as a desk. I did. Her computer sat next to a Tide pod, she was surrounded by disembodied robotic arms, and she and co-founder Reza Fetanat worked late into the night. At the time, the two were working out of a small apartment in Ottawa.
They've since moved into an office with a real desk, went through Y Combinator, and today announced an oversubscribed $6.3 million seed round led by Initialized Capital. The company is planning a product feature demonstration mission later this year, and Dissanayake said it has a “strong customer pipeline.”
The two co-founders bonded over their mutual obsession with space at the University of Ottawa and collaborated on research projects. “We were building the rocket, the rocket structure, the propulsion system and the parachute to bring the rocket home,” she said, adding that the rocket will carry the sample to a height of 30,000 feet before sending it on its way. he added. The data will be sent back to a laboratory in Canada.
As they worked on their research, Dissanayake and Phetanath realized that the industry's “biggest bottleneck” was the lack of refueling options in space. Currently, spacecraft must carry all the fuel needed for a mission. “And when the mission ends, the spacecraft essentially becomes space debris,” she says.
For longer duration or deep space missions (such as colonizing Mars), companies need access to fuel in space. “Our big mission is to build a space superhighway, where there will be multiple refueling stations where spacecraft can dock, refuel, and move,” she said.
Spaceium is not the only company with this dream. Orbit Fab is also working on refueling in space, with a start that looks years ahead. Additionally, Japanese aerospace company Astroscale has been awarded a $25.5 million U.S. Space Force contract to build refueling aircraft.
But Dissanayake is confident that they have a competitive advantage. “We've actually developed a very unique system that allows us to store fuel for long periods of time, something that hasn't really been done before,” she said, declining to provide further details.
Dissanayake has a long way to go, but he hopes one day to travel into space and gaze into the abyss “and actually see the station from where we are.”