Pale Blue Awarded Up to $27M MEXT Grant for Water Thruster Debris Mitigation
73 FOMOPale Blue was awarded a grant of up to $27M (JPY 4 billion) from Japan's Ministry of Education MEXT under the SBIR-3 program to develop and demonstrate miniaturized water-based ion and Hall-effect thrusters for space debris mitigation by fiscal 2027. The three-phase grant covers fundamental design, ground verification, and in-orbit demonstration, targeting 10-100 kg class satellites with the ion thruster and 100-500 kg class with the Hall-effect thruster.
Why it matters
The largest non-dilutive grant to any green propulsion startup globally at that stage. MEXT is essentially underwriting the product development risk — Pale Blue gets to demonstrate flight hardware while the government pays for it. Satellite operators will buy in-orbit-proven thrusters, not lab prototypes.
The numbers
Details
Funding
- Amount
- $27M
- Round
- grant
Coverage
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news.satnews.com ·
Pale Blue Awarded Up to $27M for MEXT SBIR-3 Debris Mitigation PropulsionPale Blue receives up to $27M from Japan's MEXT under SBIR-3 to develop miniaturized water-based ion and Hall-effect thrusters for satellite debris mitigation by FY2027. The three-phase grant targets propulsion systems for 10-100 kg and 100-500 kg satellite classes.
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Pale Blue was awarded a grant of up to $27M (JPY 4 billion) from Japan's Ministry of Education MEXT