Dawn Aerospace

Based in the Netherlands, New Zealand, France and the United States, Dawn Aerospace’s mission is to enable the next generation of space users by providing dramatically more scalable and sustainable ways to access and move around in space.

Spaceplane

Dawn’s suborbital spaceplanes operate much like a fleet of aircraft, taking off and landing horizontally at airports.

The Aurora is a suborbital plane designed to fly 100 km above the Earth and aims to be the first vehicle to access space multiple times per day. An active test flight program of the Aurora spaceplane demonstrator has seen 60+

flights completed. In 2024 the Aurora broke the sound barrier, reaching Mach 1.12 at 82,500 feet, and set a record for the fastest climb to 20 kilometers (65,600 feet).

In-space propulsion

Dawn is now a leading supplier of turnkey green propulsion systems for NanoSat, MicroSat, ESPA, and ESPA Grande-class satellites, as well as actively developing refueling in space with its Loop program. Dawn propulsion technology often achieves superior performance than traditional hydrazine systems by using a unique, green-propellant combination; nitrous oxide and propylene. Having proven this technology on orbit for both CubeSats and small satellites, Dawn propulsion systems have now flown on Electron, Vega, Falcon 9, and Soyuz launchers with over 200 thrusters in space across 50+ satellites and counting.