Médaille de l'innovation 2019 : Ane Aanesland

Transcription

00 :09
I grew up in the north of Norway where you see the aurora borealis every day, it was part of me, and it is part of plasma physics.

00 :16
And when I realised that experimental plasma physics is actually generating the aurora borealis in the lab, I realised I could be anywhere because I bring the Aurora with me in the world.

00 :34
The number of satellites that will be launched in the next coming years is in exponential increase, which means that we are changing completely how we are doing space and for this industry, to be sustainable, we need propulsion systems on board to make them have collision avoidance or extend the lifetime.

00 :55
So the space industry is changing from few big and expensive satellites into smaller satellites operating in constellations.

01 :07
It was the arrival of Dmytro Rafalskyi my post-doc that made us really go into this company.
With that team, the two of us, we had what it would take to generate a company.

01 :32
At ThrustMe, we are developing and commercialising electric propulsion systems for the next generation satellites.
And how we innovate is how we are thinking about propulsion as a smart complete system.
The reason why Thrustme was created is to make space sustainable.

01 :50
Today the smaller satellites operating in constellations are used for commercial applications, for example imagery of the planet in real time, or connectivity for the whole planet internet.
The commercial applications of that is just enormous.

02 :11
As a researcher you need to focus your attention to a specific topic to become expert in that field. As an entrepreneur you need to develop into a multi-tasking person, because you need to recruit your people, you need to find funding and speak with your investors, you need to follow your technology so you can sell it to your clients.

02 :33
CNRS helps us because they gave us a worldwide license of our patterns which is crucial to do what we are doing now.

02 :42
3rd of November 2019 we had our first launch, it was the first satellite propelled with Iodine worldwide so this was a historic launch, so that's exciting, and then next year we have our first commercial contracts and we will deliver it to real clients.