Photo credit: Libertatea

From a space-eye view 

• It all began with a childhood dream in Romania, fueled by a comet sighting. George-Cristian Potrivitu’s starry-eyed goals manifested into co-founding 500-backed spacetech startup Aliena in Singapore.
• Driven by passion, dedication, and years of research, Aliena developed miniaturized electric propulsion engines that offer up to 3x higher fuel efficiency at just a tenth of the original power required.
• What’s more, their propulsion engines enable satellites to deorbit at the end of their lives, reducing space debris and leaving behind a clean space for future generations.
• They also facilitate gathering higher-quality data from space for applications like environmental monitoring and resource management to disaster response.
• Despite the challenges of securing funding and finding skilled talent for their niche technology, the team successfully raised a US$5.6M Series A in 2024, and went on to commission a new facility featuring a production line and a larger R&D space.
• Read Co-founder & CTO George-Cristian’s full interview on e27.