Ad Astra Rocket Company

Ad Astra Rocket Company is a spaceflight technology company. It develops the VASIMR engine, an advanced plasma propulsion system for in-space transportation. Its US office is in Webster, Texas, near Houston.

The VASIMR engine is a plasma rocket. The site says it gives about 10 times the performance of a chemical rocket while using one tenth of the fuel. The idea started at MIT and was developed for about 25 years at NASA by astronaut Franklin Chang Diaz and his team.

A 100 kW prototype, the VX-200SS, has fired with argon as propellant. The tests ran in a 150 cubic metre vacuum chamber in Texas. The work is part of a NASA NextSTEP partnership. The site says the engine has reached technology readiness level 5.

The company lists several uses for the engine. These include cargo transfer in cislunar space, space station reboost, asteroid mining and deflection, space debris removal, human missions to Mars, and fast robotic missions.

The company was founded in 2005 by former NASA astronaut and plasma physicist Dr. Franklin Chang Diaz. The VASIMR project was privatized that year under a Space Act Agreement with NASA. The company later moved to Webster, Texas.

The company has a subsidiary in Costa Rica. The subsidiary is developing clean energy solutions based on green hydrogen energy storage. The site lists an office in Liberia, Guanacaste.

The contact page lists a phone number, +1 281-526-0500. It says the company cannot share technical details that are not published, because the project is proprietary.