Spaceium Successfully Demonstrates In-Space Refueling Actuator

Spaceium, leading the way in developing the industry’s in-orbit refueling stations, led by Ashi Dissanayake and Reza Fetanat, has built and flown the most precise robotic actuator ever tested in orbit, over 70x more accurate than the robotic arms currently operating in space.

On SpaceX’s Transporter-15 mission, Spaceium’s refueling actuator achieved a verified 0.003° rotation accuracy in orbit, equating to less than a millimeter of movement at a robotic arm’s tip.

It marks the first on-orbit demonstration of this level of precision, advancing in-space refueling from concept to reality.

Spaceium built the actuator to address a core limitation in spaceflight: when a spacecraft runs out of fuel, its mission ends. Rather than accept propellant limits as inevitable, the team saw a solvable technical gap.

With just two founders and no large team, the company moved from design to orbit in five months, successfully proving its hardware in space.

The actuator is the precision driver of Spaceium’s robotic arm system for in-space refueling, ensuring stable and reliable micro-movements. In orbit, it delivered consistent performance despite vacuum, radiation, and extreme temperature shifts.

Paired with a full-length arm, it provides the control needed to accurately align and engage another spacecraft. The mission confirmed that this critical component performs exactly as designed, where it matters most: in orbit.

This level of precision is key to enabling in-space refueling, where even minor misalignment can lead to missed connections or mission failure. The actuator delivers the fine control required to make fuel transfer safe, repeatable, and autonomous.

Reaching this milestone in just five months with a two-person team underscores what focused, high-urgency execution can achieve.

Next, Spaceium will move toward full refueling missions, including live fuel transfers and scaling to a complete refueling system.

The goal is to extend mission lifetimes, cut costs, and enable new use cases, allowing spacecraft to carry less propellant, more payload, and helping build a more sustainable space infrastructure.