Faraday Factory HTS tape launches in Zenno’s space magnet

Faraday Factory has delivered more than 10,000 km of HTS tape to hundreds of customers

(Image courtesy of Faraday Factory)

Faraday Factory HTS tape has gone into space inside the largest Supertorquer Zenno Astronautics has built to date. The Supertorquer is a superconducting magnet that uses Earth’s magnetic field to control a spacecraft’s orientation without propellant, and the high temperature superconducting (HTS) tape inside it was customised by Faraday Factory Japan. The magnet launched on October 20 aboard Portal Space Systems’ Starburst-1 spacecraft, one of 32 payloads on SpaceX’s Falcon 9 Bandwagon-5 rideshare mission, and Faraday Factory announced the launch the following day.

From Mira to Starburst-1

Faraday Factory’s release describes the Supertorquer as the most powerful magnetic actuator ever built and flown to space, and the two companies have worked together since 2024.

Zenno’s earlier Z01 Supertorquer operated aboard Impulse Space’s Mira satellite, the first superconducting product operated in space according to Zenno’s June announcement. Zenno founder and CEO Max Arshavsky points to mass drivers, magnetic radiation shields and advanced satellite mobility as capabilities the technology opens up, and the release lists fuel-free spacecraft positioning, radiation shielding and electromagnetic acceleration systems for defence, transportation and industrial use in space among its targets.

Thousands of kilometres already shipped

Faraday Factory Japan runs what its release calls the largest HTS tape manufacturing facility in the world, with more than 10,000 km of tape delivered to hundreds of customers and demand led by fusion energy, power grid, aerospace, railway, healthcare and other high-tech markets. Founder and CEO Sergey Lee called the Starburst-1 launch an important milestone that demonstrates HTS potential for some of the most demanding applications of superconductivity.

Customer missions follow in 2027

Portal announced Starburst-1 last November as its first free-flying mission with live payloads, a one-year primary mission in which Zenno will demonstrate fuel-free control and precision interactions during close operations. Starburst is an ESPA-class spacecraft built for rapid manoeuvring, and alongside Zenno’s magnet Starburst-1 carries a video camera and edge processing system from TRL11, ahead of the customer missions Portal plans to begin offering in 2027.

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