NewRocket

**Product and the concrete problem it solves.** NewRocket attacks one of spaceflight's most persistent and least glamorous liabilities: the propellant chemistry that maneuvers satellites and upper stages. For decades, in-space and many tactical propulsion systems have relied on hydrazine and its derivatives together with oxidizers such as nitrogen tetroxide — a family of hypergolic liquids that are extraordinarily toxic, carcinogenic, corrosive, and expensive to handle, requiring self-contained atmospheric protective ("SCAPE") suits, dedicated fueling ranges, and elaborate ground safety procedures. Solid propellants, by contrast, are simple and storable but cannot be throttled, stopped, or restarted once ignited. NewRocket's answer is **PowerGel**, a gelled bi-propellant engineered to combine the best of both worlds: the storability and safety of a solid with the controllability of a liquid. The company markets PowerGel and the engines built around it as a drop-in, greener path to the same missions that hydrazine performs today — station-keeping, orbit-raising, attitude control, de-orbit, and maneuvering — while claiming greater than 50% reductions in mission cost versus toxic-fuel alternatives by stripping out the hazardous-handling overhead. The company's public positioning is explicit that the technology targets both "space and defence missions," making it a genuinely dual-purpose propulsion play rather than a purely commercial green-propulsion story.

**Core technology and how it actually works.** The heart of NewRocket is a gelled hypergolic bi-propellant: the fuel and oxidizer are thickened into stable gels that behave like solids at rest but flow and atomize like liquids when pressurized and injected, igniting on contact (hypergolically) without a separate ignition source. Because the propellants are gelled, they resist leakage, sloshing, and boil-off, and can be stored across a wide temperature band — the company cites a storage range on the order of -10 to 40°C and describes the fuel as non-cryogenic and non-toxic. Because they still flow and can be metered, the engine can be throttled, shut down, and restarted on demand, delivering the "on/off" controllable thrust that solids cannot and that maneuvering missions require. NewRocket says PowerGel achieves performance comparable to legacy hydrazine-based bi-propellants, so the operational envelope is preserved while the toxicity and handling burden are removed. The underlying chemistry traces to research by Prof. Benny Natan of the Faculty of Aerospace Engineering at the Technion – Israel Institute of Technology, a long-standing academic center for gel-propellant work, and the intellectual property was exclusively licensed to the company — an important defensibility anchor, since gel-propellant formulation and injector design are specialized, hard-won know-how rather than commodity engineering.

**Market, customers, and go-to-market.** NewRocket sits in the fast-expanding market for green and storable in-space propulsion. The near-term commercial pull comes from the proliferation of small satellites, orbital transfer vehicles ("space tugs"), lunar and planetary landers, and the emerging concept of in-space refueling depots in low Earth orbit and cislunar space — all of which need compact, safe, controllable propulsion. Regulatory and cost pressure against hydrazine (which is increasingly scrutinized under REACH and other regimes) creates a structural tailwind for non-toxic alternatives. NewRocket's go-to-market is business-to-business: it aims to supply propellant and engine subsystems to satellite manufacturers, integrators, and space-vehicle developers rather than build spacecraft itself, and it has publicly signaled ambitions to enter the United States market, the largest pool of commercial and defense space buyers. On the defense side, the same storable, throttleable, restartable characteristics map onto missile and interceptor propulsion, divert-and-attitude-control systems, and tactical rocket motors, giving the company a second, adjacent customer base among defense primes and missile-system integrators.

**Traction, funding, and third-party validation.** NewRocket was incubated inside **Incubit Ventures**, the deep-tech startup incubator owned and backed by Elbit Systems and operated under the Israel Innovation Authority's incubator program — a meaningful validation signal, since Elbit is one of Israel's largest defense primes and the incubator selection implies technical and defense-market vetting. The company has publicly reported additional backing from **Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI)**, another tier-one Israeli aerospace-defense prime, and disclosed raising a roughly $1 million tranche from the UK-based Consensus Business Group (CBG), associated with investor Vincent Tchenguiz, as part of an ongoing round; company materials also reference CBG/Menora Mivtachim and the Technion among partners, and the firm has received Israel Innovation Authority support. NewRocket has publicly stated that laboratory proof-of-concept firings of PowerGel demonstrated reliable operation across all modes and impulse levels. The presence of two major Israeli defense-aerospace primes (Elbit via Incubit, and IAI) as backers is the strongest third-party signal in the file; the countervailing point is that publicly disclosed capital remains modest and full round sizes, revenue, and firm flight heritage are not clearly documented in open sources.

**Founders and team background.** NewRocket was founded in 2014 by **Zohar Schlagman** and **Moti Elyashiv** within the Incubit incubator, building on the Technion gel-propellant research of Prof. Benny Natan. In October 2018 the company appointed **Dr. Eran Privman** — formerly CEO of SpaceIL, the nonprofit behind Israel's Beresheet lunar lander — as CEO, a credibility-adding hire given his experience leading a complex Israeli space program; more recent public materials list other individuals in leadership/contact roles, so the current executive lineup is not fully confirmable from open sources and warrants direct verification. Headcount has historically been very small (public figures around 9 employees as of 2018), consistent with a lean, IP-centric deep-tech venture. The team's core strengths are the exclusive Technion IP, defense-prime incubation, and space-program leadership experience; its principal gaps in the public record are the depth of the propulsion-engineering bench, manufacturing capacity, and up-to-date headcount and financials.

**Competitive dynamics.** NewRocket competes in the global green- and storable-propulsion race against both government-derived monopropellants and other startups. (1) The dominant "green monopropellant" alternatives are ASCENT/AF-M315E (commercialized in the U.S. ecosystem) and Sweden's LMP-103S from Bradford ECAPS, both of which have accumulated genuine flight heritage that NewRocket has not yet matched. (2) Incumbent hydrazine and MON bi-propellant systems from established suppliers (e.g., ArianeGroup, Aerojet Rocketdyne/L3Harris, Nammo, Moog) are entrenched, qualified, and trusted despite their toxicity. (3) Other propulsion startups (Israel's own Tehiru and NewRocket-adjacent hybrid players, plus international electric- and chemical-propulsion entrants) chase the same small-sat and tug demand. NewRocket's differentiation is its gel-bi-propellant approach, which promises hydrazine-class thrust and throttleability with solid-like storage safety — a combination the mono-propellant "green" competitors do not fully replicate. Its levers are: (i) exclusive Technion gel IP; (ii) defense-prime incubation and investment (Elbit, IAI); (iii) explicit dual space/defense positioning; and (iv) large claimed cost savings from eliminating hazardous handling. The risk is that flight-proven green mono-propellants and deep-pocketed incumbents consolidate the market before NewRocket demonstrates qualified, flight-heritage hardware.

**Defense, security, and resilience dual-use relevance.** The dual-use case here is unusually direct and is stated by the company itself. Storable, non-cryogenic, throttleable, restartable propellants are foundational to missile and missile-defense propulsion: interceptors, kill vehicles, and maneuvering munitions rely on propulsion that can be stored ready-to-fire for long periods and then deliver rapid, controllable, on-demand thrust — precisely PowerGel's advertised profile. Gel propellants specifically have long been studied for tactical rocket motors and divert-and-attitude-control systems (DACS) because they offer the insensitive-munition safety and storability of solids with the throttleability of liquids. Beyond weapons, the technology supports space resilience and sovereignty: sovereign, non-toxic propulsion reduces dependence on export-controlled foreign hydrazine supply chains and hazardous-handling infrastructure, and safer propellants ease responsive-space and rapid-launch operations. The company's incubation by Elbit's Incubit and investment from IAI reinforce that defense integrators see the relevance. The appropriate calibration: the space-propulsion product is the fielded commercial thesis, while the missile/defense propulsion applications are a credible and company-acknowledged adjacency whose specific fielded contracts are not documented in public sources.

**Growth stage, trajectory, and key diligence risks.** NewRocket is an early-stage, IP-rich deep-tech company that has been developing its technology over an unusually long horizon — founded in 2014, it has advanced through incubation, proof-of-concept testing, and partnerships with major primes, but public evidence of a qualified, flight-proven engine, large funding rounds, or booked revenue is thin. That long timeline with modest disclosed capital and a small team is itself the central diligence flag: gel-propellant propulsion is technically hard, and the path from lab firings to space-qualified, man-rated or missile-grade hardware is capital-intensive and slow. Key risks: (1) **flight heritage gap** — green mono-propellant competitors already fly, and space buyers are conservative; (2) **capital and timeline** — undisclosed/modest funding against a long, expensive qualification road; (3) **team and status opacity** — current leadership, headcount, and financials are not clearly documented publicly, and the company's present operating status should be directly confirmed; (4) **manufacturing and supply** — scaling gel-propellant production and injector hardware to flight quality is nontrivial; (5) **competitive and regulatory** — entrenched incumbents and qualified green alternatives, plus export-control complexity around defense-adjacent propulsion; and (6) **market timing** — dependence on the small-sat/tug/lander and missile-propulsion demand curves materializing on schedule. The bull case is a sovereign, Elbit- and IAI-linked green propulsion platform with genuine dual-use pull; the bear case is a technically elegant propellant that never crosses the qualification-and-flight-heritage chasm against better-funded, already-flying rivals.