Aliena

Aliena, headquartered in Singapore and founded in 2016, is a Southeast Asian electric propulsion startup developing miniaturized Hall-effect thrusters and gridded ion thrusters for smallsats and cubesats — providing high-efficiency, low-thrust propulsion systems that enable precise orbit maintenance, constellation station-keeping, deorbit at end of mission, and inter-orbital transfers for satellite operators who previously lacked access to cost-effective in-space propulsion.

Aliena's product lineup includes the MUSIC (Micro Scalable Ion Thruster) electrospray thruster for 6U-12U cubesats and the CAVE (Cubesat/smallsat Hall-effect thruster) in various power classes from 50W to 200W — covering the propulsion needs of satellites from 3kg cubesats to 100kg smallsats. Hall-effect thrusters accelerate xenon propellant ions using crossed electric and magnetic fields, achieving specific impulses of 1,000-3,000 seconds — roughly 5-10x higher than chemical bipropellant systems — enabling far more efficient use of onboard propellant mass.

This efficiency advantage is critical for constellation operators building dozens to hundreds of smallsats where each kilogram of additional propellant mass multiplies across the fleet.

Singapore's position as a regional hub for satellite technology has positioned Aliena at the center of Southeast Asia's growing space industry, with customers including satellite constellation developers, Earth observation companies, and technology demonstration missions in Singapore, Australia, Japan, and Europe. Aliena's academic roots connect to Nanyang Technological University (NTU) and the National University of Singapore (NUS) space research programs, and the company participates in Singapore's national space technology development program administered by the Singapore Space and Technology Association (SSTA) and Enterprise Singapore.

Aliena competes with Busek, Enpulsion (Austria), ThrustMe (France), and Bradford ECAPS in the global smallsat electric propulsion market — a sector that has grown rapidly as regulatory pressure for deorbit capability and constellation operators' demand for orbit-raising propulsion have made propulsion systems near-mandatory for commercial LEO smallsats above ~200kg.