Impulse Space

Impulse Space was founded in 2021 by Tom Mueller, the first employee at SpaceX and the engineer behind the Merlin and Draco engine families, to focus on what happens after a satellite reaches low Earth orbit. The company's Mira orbital transfer vehicle, roughly the size of a dishwasher, uses eight in-house Saiph bipropellant thrusters and first flew on the SpaceX Transporter-9 rideshare in late 2023. A larger kick stage called Helios is in development, powered by the staged-combustion methalox Deneb engine and sized to move more than five metric tons from LEO to geostationary orbit in under a day. The team is based in El Segundo, California, and has been selected by NASA to study orbital transfer services for hard-to-reach destinations. Customers include commercial GEO operators, government payloads, and rideshare passengers needing precise drop-off orbits. A $300 million Series C closed in 2025 to accelerate Helios and expand mobility services.