A start-up based at the Harwell Campus in Oxfordshire that builds small electric plasma thrusters to move satellites around in space.
Magdrive makes propulsion for small satellites. Its Rogue thruster is an electric plasma system that uses a solid metal as fuel, and stores energy on board. It is designed to fit the small CubeSat format, weighs about 2.5 kilograms, and produces thrust measured in the tens of millinewtons. That is a tiny force, but in the weightlessness of space it is enough to change a satellite's orbit over time. The company says the thruster can be used to keep groups of satellites in place, to carry out in-space servicing and to help satellites avoid collisions with debris.
Mark Stokes (chief executive) and Dr Thomas Clayson (chief technology officer), both graduates of Imperial College London, founded Magdrive. Sources disagree on the year, with Wikipedia saying 2019 and a Harwell article suggesting 2020. We did not find a formal mission statement or values page, so we have not invented one. In a Harwell Campus article, Mr Stokes said the team had spent the past four years building something that breaks the mould, which shows the company sees itself as doing something new in a field dominated by older designs.
In the UK, Magdrive is based at the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus in Oxfordshire, which that article describes as home to over 100 space organisations. That kind of cluster means the company works near other space firms, research labs and test facilities. The Harwell article also mentions operations in Los Angeles. In 2023 it ran a small in-orbit experiment with EnduroSat. In June 2025 its Going Rogue mission launched on a SpaceX rideshare, delivered with the Italian company D-Orbit, as the first full-scale in-orbit test of Rogue. Results from that mission were due later in 2025, and we did not find them.
We found no information about Magdrive's culture, headcount or working style, so we cannot say what it is like inside. The best clues are the way it describes itself: a young engineering team working on a single hard problem. A company like this tends to be small enough that engineers see their work go all the way from a design to a test in orbit, though that is a general point about small start-ups and not something Magdrive has said.
Roles at a propulsion company include plasma physicists, electronics and power engineers, mechanical designers, test engineers, software developers and people to run business and customer relationships. Physics, maths and engineering are the usual subjects, and a space cluster like Harwell gives a wide set of neighbouring employers if you want to build a career in the area.
Website: www.magdrive.space
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