# Dawn Aerospace
*commercial . companies*

Space transportation and propulsion company with offices in New Zealand and the Netherlands. EO-Atlas relevance is ancillary: non-toxic in-space propulsion, refuellable spacecraft infrastructure, and reusable suborbital spaceplane flights that may support payload testing and spaceflight technology demonstration rather than direct Earth-observation data products.

## Specifications
- **country**: New Zealand / Netherlands
- **website**: https://www.dawnaerospace.com
- **operator domains**: ["dawnaerospace.com"]
- **founded year**: 2017
- **entity type**: company
- **last verified date**: 2026-06-10
- **verified by**: operator
- **claim status**: unclaimed
- **attributes**: {"kind":"commercial","country":"New Zealand / Netherlands","website":"https://www.dawnaerospace.com","operator_domains":"[\"dawnaerospace.com\"]","founded_year":2017,"description":"Space transportation and propulsion company with offices in New Zealand and the Netherlands. EO-Atlas relevance is ancillary: non-toxic in-space propulsion, refuellable spacecraft infrastructure, and reusable suborbital spaceplane flights that may support payload testing and spaceflight technology demonstration rather than direct Earth-observation data products."}
- **relevance**: in-scope

## Editorial
Dawn Aerospace is a space transportation and spacecraft propulsion company founded in 2017, with operations across New Zealand, the Netherlands, France and the United States.[^dawn-about] The company develops non-toxic, nitrous-oxide and propylene chemical propulsion systems for satellites and reusable suborbital launch vehicles.

The SatDrive is a turn-key propulsion system for satellites in the roughly 30 kg to 500+ kg class, integrating thrusters, tanks, valves and control electronics.[^dawn-satdrive-brochure] The CubeDrive is a 0.8U integrated unit for CubeSat-class spacecraft.[^dawn-propulsion] B-series thrusters span the 1 N, 5 N, 20 N and 200 N thrust classes.[^dawn-thrusters] As of May 2026, Dawn Heritage page records 207 thrusters operating on 51 satellites in orbit, including 22 SatDrive and 12 CubeDrive systems.[^dawn-heritage] Customers include Pixxel, Sidus Space, Blue Canyon Technologies and BRIN, among others, and its propulsion systems are used on Earth-observation satellites alongside other space applications.[^dawn-propulsion]

The Aurora spaceplane is a remotely piloted, reusable rocket-powered aircraft for suborbital payload campaigns. Dawn describes a top speed of Mach 3.7, a maximum altitude of 100 km, a 15 kg payload capacity and a four-hour turnaround time on the dedicated Spaceplane page;[^dawn-spaceplane] the Dawn homepage quotes 10 kg payload capacity.[^dawn-home] Aurora has carried the Arizona State University LEO-TIMS thermal-infrared camera on an Earth-imaging flight[^dawn-asu-payload] and the Scout Space Morning Sparrow space-domain-awareness payload on a surveillance test flight.[^dawn-scout-sda]

Dawn Aerospace's relevance to Earth observation is ancillary: its propulsion systems enable satellite orbital manoeuvring and deorbit for EO spacecraft operators, while Aurora provides a suborbital platform for payload testing and sensor demonstration.

## Sources
- [dawn-home] | Dawn Aerospace official website | https://www.dawnaerospace.com/ | tier=operator-marketing | accessed=2026-06-10
- [dawn-about] | About - Dawn Aerospace | https://www.dawnaerospace.com/about | tier=operator-marketing | accessed=2026-06-10
- [dawn-legal] | Legal - Dawn Aerospace | https://www.dawnaerospace.com/legal | tier=operator-marketing | accessed=2026-06-10 | published=2026-02-01
- [dawn-propulsion] | In-Space Propulsion - Dawn Aerospace | https://www.dawnaerospace.com/green-propulsion | tier=operator-marketing | accessed=2026-06-10
- [dawn-satdrive-brochure] | DA18 SatDrive Brochure 20240304 | https://www.dawnaerospace.com/_files/ugd/cfd301_07bb0b18d97c41ebac9fe8d62b1cb27c.pdf | tier=operator-datasheet | accessed=2026-06-10 | published=2024-03-04
- [dawn-thrusters] | In-Space Propulsion - Thrusters - Dawn Aerospace | https://www.dawnaerospace.com/thrusters | tier=operator-marketing | accessed=2026-06-10
- [dawn-heritage] | In-Space Propulsion Heritage - Dawn Aerospace | https://www.dawnaerospace.com/heritage-and-missions | tier=operator-marketing | accessed=2026-06-10 | published=2026-05-04
- [dawn-spaceplane] | Aurora Spaceplane - Dawn Aerospace | https://www.dawnaerospace.com/spaceplane | tier=operator-marketing | accessed=2026-06-10
- [dawn-asu-payload] | Arizona State University LEO-TIMS Camera Flight on Aurora Spaceplane | https://www.dawnaerospace.com/latest-news/asu-payload | tier=operator-press | accessed=2026-06-10 | published=2026-02-19
- [dawn-scout-sda] | Scout Space and Dawn Aerospace Complete First Suborbital Spaceplane Surveillance Test Flight | https://www.dawnaerospace.com/latest-news/suborbital-sda-test-flight | tier=operator-press | accessed=2026-06-10 | published=2025-08-06

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Source: https://eo-atlas.org/companies/dawn-aerospace
Maintainer: SpectraWorks B.V. (CC-BY 4.0)