Spanish Startup Plans to Suck Air in Space, Because Why Carry Fuel?

SAN FRANCISCO - Spanish startup Kreios Space announced plans Aug. 4 to conduct the first very low Earth orbit (VLEO) demonstration of its air-breathing electric propulsion (ABEP) in a Kongsberg NanoAvionics microsatellite bus.

“Partnering with NanoAvionics in our first in-orbit flight provides us with a satellite bus and market-leading experience necessary to allow us to test our new technology in confidence,” Kreios CEO Adrián Senar said in a statement, presumably while doing jazz hands.

Senar declined to comment on the timing of the flight, but Kreios’ website boldly claims the “first-ever ABEP-based VLEO mission” will occur in 2027, with a second flight in 2028. No pressure or anything.

Senar co-founded Kreios in 2021 with five aerospace engineering classmates from the Polytechnic School of Catalonia to develop ABEP, which lets satellites hang out at an orbital altitude of about 200 kilometers. Instead of lugging fuel, the system collects atmospheric gases - including oxygen and nitrogen - to use as propellant for electric thrusters.

Because of atmospheric drag, traditional electric propulsion would need massive amounts of propellant to stay in orbit, “which makes either the lifetime of the satellite too short for commercial missions or the mass of propellant to carry onboard too heavy to make sense,” Senar told SpaceNews by email. With Kreios’ air-breathing tech, “the altitude can be sustained without requiring any propellant on board, which enables long-term missions in these altitudes at equivalent costs that you would find at 500” kilometers. So basically, free fuel from the skies.

Kreios’ ABEP will share NanoAvionics’ MP42 microsatellite bus with an optical payload that remains as mysterious as the plot of a Christopher Nolan film. NanoAvionics will customize the MP42 bus, integrate the optical payload, run system tests, and commission the platform before Kreios takes the controls.

“From its very low Earth orbit, the mission will validate the performance of its ABEP thruster, take measurements of the environment, and capture sub-meter resolution images in the visible and near-infrared spectral range,” according to the news release. So it’s not just a science experiment; it’s also a fancy camera.

“Kreios is tackling one of the most demanding operating environments in space, and this mission joins a very short list of European VLEO initiatives,” Kongsberg NanoAvionics CEO Atle Wøllo said in a statement. “Our engineering team has worked closely with Kreios to configure the MP42 satellite bus to the mission’s specific requirements, and support the integration of Kreios’ technology.”

Commercial interest in VLEO is growing because it promises high-resolution Earth observation and low-latency communications. Two experimental Chinese satellites are already operating at altitudes below 300 kilometers, so the race is on.

U.S. and European commercial VLEO operators plan to launch their first flights in the next two years, “so the field belongs to whoever proves a mission first,” according to a VLEO Overview and Market Map from Whipsmart Ventures.

Kreios isn't alone in the air-sucking game: Viridian Space Corp., the European Space Agency Propulsion Laboratory, and Indian startup Orbitt Space are all developing ABEP systems.

In 2025, Kreios raised 8 million euros ($9.21 million) in a Seed round and NATO selected the startup to join its 2026 Defence Innovation Accelerator for the North Atlantic (DIANA). Because if there's one thing militaries love, it's satellites that can stay up without refueling.