Lockheed Martin Ventures invests in Helicity Space

SAN FRANCISCO – Helicity Space, a California startup developing fusion engines for spaceflight, announced an investment April 2 from Lockheed Martin Ventures.
While the parties declined to reveal the value of the investment, Lockheed Martin’s backing is important because it’s one of the “strategic partners that will matter over the next 10 years,” Helicity co-founder Stephane Lintner told SpaceNews.
Other strategic partners include Airbus Ventures and Voyager Space Holdings, two of the investors in Helicity’s seed funding round announced in December.
Deep SpacePasadena-based Helicity is developing technology to propel spacecraft with short bursts of fusion.
“Propulsion is the biggest problem we have right now” for deep space travel, Lintner said. “Fusion brings the promise of very little propellant, very high power and potentially covering very long distances.”
Another approach to speeding up deep-space transportation is nuclear therma...

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