Sandia National Laboratories’ spin-off mPower Technology secured Series B funding to scale its production of silicon solar panels for space applications.
Space-based solar power manufacturing specialist mPower Technology announced it secured a $21 million Series B funding led by Razor’s Edge Ventures and joined by Shield Capital.
“This new funding from highly regarded space sector investors that focus on national security, is a testament to the confidence our customers have in our proven ability to rapidly deliver space power at scale,” said Kevin Hell, president and chief executive officer of mPower Technology.
The company spun off from development in Sandia National Laboratories and secured Series A funding led by Cottonwood Technology.
While many solar panels used for space travel and space stations are often made of gallium arsenide (GaAs) cells, mPower’s solar cells are made of silicon, similar to conventional terrestrial solar panels. The company said its silicon cells offer a more cost effective and production-ready alternative than GaAs cells.
The company develops a “DragonSCALES” design, made of a flexible, interconnected mesh of silicon cells. The company reported in a whitepaper that its silicon cells are three to five times less expensive than their GaAs counterparts.
The Albuquerque, New Mexico headquartered company was chosen as a solar power provider for key industry players such as Airbus, Blue Origin/Honeybee, Firefly Aerospace, Lynk Global, Gravitics and others.
mPower said it will supply its customers via production from a contract manufacturer Universal Instruments Corporation in Conklin, New York. The contract manufacturing site is expected to have a 2 MW annual production capacity, which the company said is greater than the total combined output of GaAs manufacturing globally.
The company has a contract with Airbus to supply more than 1.1 MW of solar modules for Airbus’ MDA Aurora satellite program. In 2022 it was chosen as a provider for solar cells on the exterior of a space station housing unit developed by Gravitics.
The space solar market segment is expected to grow significantly as companies such as SpaceX, Amazon, Telesat and OneWeb, as well as groups from countries such as China, India and Russia have announced plans to launch ‘megaconstellations’ of smaller low earth orbit (LEO) satellites that could put over 45,000 satellites into orbit during the next decade, said mPower. That level of satellite deployment is about five times the number of objects sent to space in the past 60 years, which totals just shy of 9,000, according to the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs.
“mPower has emerged as the only solar provider in the space market with a flight-proven design that can meet both the aggressive cost targets and production volumes required by large-scale Space 2.0 missions, such as LEO (low earth orbit) constellations,” said Hell.
