“Deploying Quantum Drive into orbit in a Rogue satellite on SpaceX Transporter 9 is a milestone for the future of space propulsion,” Mansell said. IVO chief executive Richard Mansell said his company performed 100 hours of vacuum chamber testing before the launch, during which the quantum drive produced a small amount of thrust. The QI theory was first proposed in 2007 by physicist Mike McCulloch, who drew on the mysterious properties of quantum mechanics to account for a new understanding of inertia as defined by Newton’s First Law of Motion. It relies on a controversial theory called Quantized Inertia (QI) that challenges Isaac Newton’s Laws of Motion, with some physicists dismissing the technology as impossible. IVO claims that its technology is the world’s first commercially viable pure electric propulsion technology that works in space, drawing “limitless power for propulsion from the Sun”.
The Quantum Drive engine, built by US startup IVO Ltd, was fitted on a microsatellite that entered orbit aboard SpaceX’s Transporter 9 mission, which lifted off from the Vandenberg Space Force Base in California.
SpaceX has launched a new type of zero-fuel propulsion system into orbit, which its creators claim will revolutionise the space industry.
