SmallSat Europe Updates

By Chris Forrester

Noel Rimalovski (Managing Director, New York-based GH Partners). At GH, Mr. Rimalovski specializes in the telecom, media, technology, space and defense sectors, and moderated this panel at the Smallsat Europe event in Amsterdam on May 27.  He asked panellists how they viewed the current financial market (better, worse, much the same) compared with 2024. He also polled a question to delegates as to whether there would be significant cross-Atlantic investment activity this year, and 69% of respondents said ‘No’. 

Sven Meyer-Brunswick (Principal, Alpine Space Ventures) said he loved the science stuff, but was concentrating on space as an industry. This is what drives growth, he said, and cash needed to be deployed where operators and nations were under threat and where critical infrastructure was involved. The recent geopolitical changes also mean there’s cash being unlocked for Defense-related concepts, and almost every European nation is upping its spending on Space.  

Daniel Biedermann (Investment Partner, at Luxembourg-based NewSpace Capital) has over 30 years of experience in the satellite and launcher sectors, including manufacturing, operations, business development and strategy. He suggested that looking at any potential company there needed to be a comprehensive understanding – by the business – of developing the market, growing the business, and the potential for business maturity. The recent problems out of Washington now puts a number of extra hurdles to be overcome. Businesses will have to decide whether they want to make those moves. But if your target market is in the US then you have no option except to clear and hire US security cleared staff, for example. 

Mike Collett (Managing Partner, Promus Ventures) and an investor in – amongst others – Rocket Lab. He explained that their investment strategy was not limited to Europe or the US or elsewhere, but whether the business was capable of growth. Rocket Lab was one such perfect example. Defense is a big deal, and this is very useful in Earth observation. Collett said that the Trump administration had now placed a number of barriers into the mix as regards cross-Atlantic activity. But we are now seeing companies saying they do not want to go to the US.  He also stressed that while the IPO window was largely closed, the fact was that AI was sucking the air out of the market. 

Charles Beigbeder (General Partner, Expansion) said he had 23 businesses in its funding portfolio. Some aspects were true cross-overs and Earth observation was very useful in climate change but was also valuable to other end-users including the military. He said that some businesses that Expansion was supporting would take anything from 4 years to much longer to secure investment. The good news from the Oval Office over the past few months is the move in Europe which states they want European autonomy. “But they will still go to the US because the market demands it.”

The panel agreed that the next few years would see consolidation in Europe, whether from private Launch providers, or Earth Observation data analysis. Beigbeder suggested that Europe’s 15 or so rocket launch companies would end up being just 3 or 4 within a year or two, and this excluded Arianespace. 

Sven Meyer-Brunswick was also pessimistic about Europe’s mega-project IRIS² and said in his view the scheme was “dead in the water”.

By Chris Forrester

Dara Penahy (Partner, Millbank LLP) moderated this fascinating panel. He told delegates that – at Q1 – the sector was about 10% up on private equity raising compared with 2024. But it seems everything has changed in the past couple of months, and the Trump administration seems to have helped the cash flow towards Europe and away from the US. This is generating a significant amount of interest in European activity, he said. 

Sandrine Bedat (Deputy Head of the Defense, Shipping, Space, Telecom Unit, BPI France) said her bank supported the export prospects of a business especially if a conventional commercial bank was reluctant to embrace long-term financing. Her portfolio has included the space sector for 22 years and most of the related French export credits supported over the period whatever the financing structure. BPI could handle financing of up to 15 years. 

Wim Steenbakkers (Managing Director, ING Wholesale Banking) said that little has changed in terms of the usual due diligence, but when commercial banks suffer and retreat we have seen funding take precedence over satellite building or launching. And the technology is changing fast, but this gives opportunities especially in Earth observation. He has more than 25 years global satellite finance and advisory experience ranging from corporate to structured project (export) finance and start-ups to mature corporates

Dr. Gianluigi Baldesi (Head of Ventures and Financing Office, European Space Agency) said that in 35 years the ESA financial model had changed. Initially it was innovation and R&D but nowadays the sector was increasingly vibrant, and ESA was supporting market growth in terms of new business. The latest initiative is the European Launcher Challenge. It is important to attract new ideas and concepts, and Space is at the top of every government’s agenda and at the Prime Ministerial level. ESA is present to help them. 

Anders Bohlin (Lead Economist – Digital Infrastructure, European Investment Bank) said the EIB took a long-term view of the market. Today, we look at small ticket items, say €10-€20 million. Mr Bohlin has also contributed in defining new financial instruments for digital infrastructure jointly with the European Commission, national promotional banks and the private sector. There were recent changes and today the EIB can also help fund projects where the end client is military, for example. However, there’s a problem in market fragmentation. We see these new players but they are often too small. They are good companies but they need to merge. The rule even applies to us. We are the biggest financial player in our sector Europe but there should be more of us! EIB can help with defence-related projects, except where weapons are involved.

The panel discussed IRIS². Steenbakkers said that first there needed to be solid contracts in place. There will be a detailed technical due diligence for the project. Key to the financing dilemma would be the ultimate cashflows. 

Sandrine Bedat agreed, and said nobody knew anything about IRIS², but did not doubt that lenders would be present once the project’s details were known. The earlier those details were known was better, and the length of the terms of the loans needed.

By Chris Forrester

Moderator: Ahsun Murad (Cofounder, President and CEO, Optimal Satcom). Optical Satcom was spun-off from Lockheed Martin and Comsat in 2002. Over the last 22 years since its founding, Optimal Satcom has grown to support a large segment of the satellite industry. Mr Murad moderated the Smallsat Europe session at Amsterdam on My 27 and introduced his panel saying that while there was a great deal of hype in AI, there was also a great deal of promise. 

The challenges of handling satellite-generated data was, however, immense, said Murad. However, there were environmental risks of handling huge amounts of data in space because of the power likely to be needed. 

Rama Afullo (Founder and CEO, Satlyt) based in Silicon Valley and worked at SpaceX and Google said that he was especially excited by the prospects of using GenAI in orbital satellites.  He said the technology allowed a number of applications in orbit, including traffic management while in orbit.  AI was also very useful in predictive analytics. 

Milos Krasojevic (Manager of Product Management for GPU systems, Supermicro). Milos leads EMEA PoC Lab for entire Supermicro portfolio with expertise on AI solutions for specific customer requirements. He told delegates that first the data needed to be generated, and then interpreting that data although then using AI and training AI to further improve the results.  

Alessandro Benetton (CTO, AIKO). Turin-based Mr Benetton was selected in Forbes Italy’s ‘30 Under 30 for Science’. He brings a deep passion for innovation and a strong technical backbone in space automation and mission analysis. He told delegates that AIKO was already using AI to extract data from a satellite, and where the satellite was increasingly autonomous and able to achieve its own mission objectives. Indeed, he said that such autonomy was probably vital for the efficient use of a satellite. AI has the benefit of removing or reducing bottlenecks on the satellite. He explained that AIKO was already ‘inferencing’ data.

Alan Campbell (Principal Space Products Solutions Architect, Amazon Web Services – AWS) and very much focusing on Satcom, Earth observation and AI/ML space applications. He highlighted that his customers were collecting several Terabytes per day of data, and where generative AI models were already being applied to deliver new insights in flood damage or wildfire assessment. He said he was excited to see the next wave of ML inferencing use-cases at the space edge. 

Robert Blamire (Senior Manager, Accenture) and is a 15-year leading staffer and now on Accenture’s space division. Whenever you are dealing with rich data stream AI was increasingly crucial to the efficient use of a satellite.

By Chris Forrester

Jean-Hubert Lenotte (Director Strategies & Resources, Eutelsat) explained that in the 11 years that he had been in the industry, progress has been incredible in the smallsat sector. We see significant growth in our industry. The cost of capacity, ten years ago, was €5 million per gigabit. Now it is barely €1 million. That reduction in cost will continue and this will open up new opportunities. This will continue. Look at Starlink today, where there’s a very good service provided at a very competitive price.

The problems in Ukraine, not only in primary use but as back-up, show us what this represents. However, today’s revenue is miniscule compared to ground-based systems. But demand will certainly be present.

We firmly believe there will only be a few players in this market. We see 2 or 3 in Ku, and 2 or 3 in Ka-band. What is NOT easy is the establishment of a true global service, including the Earth stations, plus connectivity, is not easy. Sending the satellites up into orbit is, in many regards, the easier part of the task. 

Lenotte explained that Eutelsat’s OneWeb division was already supporting B2B clients, as well as crucial help to Ukraine. He forecast that there would be significant growth for OneWeb (“triple digit growth”) this year.

He added that IRIS² would add to Eutelsat’s bandwidth. Europe is very much present in space, and we need and require a sovereign presence in Europe, and needed for our independence in places like Ukraine. 

By Chris Forrester

Torsten Kriening (CEO and Publisher, SpaceWatch.Global) moderated the Optical Communications for the Next Generation of Space Networks session at the SmallSat Europe event held in Amsterdam on May 27. He heard from his panel that laser-based direct-to-ground was likely to be solved within the next 5 years. 

Daniel Troendle (Head of Sales EMEA, Tesat-Spacecom GmbH & Co.) told delegates that connectivity was key, and this was not possible currently from a single vendor. “If I use my Android phone to call my son and his iPhone there will not be a problem in connecting. We need the same in our segment.” Tesat-Spacecom is targeting producing up to 1000 terminal annually.

Dr. Jean-François Morizur (CEO, Cailabs). Once it was getting the data through the atmosphere was the critical part. That has now been solved thanks to years of effort. As Cailabs’ CEO, he is responsible for driving the company’s vision and strategic direction. Under his leadership, Cailabs has emerged as a leading company in its field, pushing the boundaries of what is achievable in the world of optical products with groundbreaking applications in space, defence, energy and other major industries. Currently the build rate for his company is about 10 units annually but a recent decision to build a new factory would raise that target to nearer 50 units a year.

Hirokazu Mori (Group Chief Strategy Officer / CEO of USA, Warpspace) said his company is solving communications between different operators and technologies. “We looked at communicating from MEO to LEO. Higher orbits means more data.”

Gregg Burgess (VP/Space Systems Division, General Atomics Electromagnetics) said “Interoperability is the greatest challenge we have today. We have had huge successes but solving the other challenges is down to wider adoption of common standards.” The US Space Development Agency is focussed on LEO to LEO and the next stages will be more complex in terms of the terminals as we move to MEO and GEO. He explained that there was still work to be done on interoperability, although he felt that within the next year he expected to see connectivity solutions emerge. 

Dr. Jordan Vannitsen (Co-Founder and CEO, Odysseus Space): “The problem we are solving is using laser connectivity from satellite to Earth. What we want is not to be delivering thousands of terminals but to handle data as efficiently as possible, and that’s where the revenue comes in.”

By Chris Forrester

Peter de Selding (Co-Founder & Chief Editor, Space Intel Report) moderated the Earth Observation (EO) and Climate Monitoring session at the SmallSat Europe event in Amsterdam on May 27. He said that EO, now with the increasing focus of climate change, was a crucial task for smaller satellites. He also told delegates that the upcoming EU-backed ‘Space Act’ would apply to European as well as non-European parties who wanted to work over Europe. The intention, said De Selding, was to give European players an advantage over non-European rivals. 

Dr. Malcolm Davidson, Head of the Campaigns Section in the Earth and Mission Sciences Division, European Space Agency (ESA) told delegates that his department was handling a variety of EO projects and included Copernicus and its long-term mission. Type 2 was meteo-based. Science-based research missions included measurements from space with laser and with a focus on climate change. His department also looked after the ‘Scout’ missions which were smaller craft and with a speedy approach to the market and an indicator for demand for smallsats. 

Andrea Vena, Chief Climate and Sustainability Officer, European Space Agency (ESA) said his responsibility was to look after the other side of the coin, and because ESA wanted to be role-model for the industry as a whole especially in terms of sustainability and as part of ESA’s Green Agenda. 

Jarkko Antila (CEO, Kuva Space Oy) is very much in EO and is targeting 100 satellite to be in orbit by the end of this decade. This would give the business an ‘always on’ view of a client’s demand which could range from a complete Continent or down to a village. The aim is to have the data available in real time helped by on-board processing. Their client portfolio includes military as well as crop examinations. “We aim to get crucial information to the client in 15 minutes and by the end of the decade we will be covering the planet three times per day.”  The Finnish government has helped Kuva and it also has private investors.

Nina Soleng (Head of Communications, KSAT – Kongsberg Satellite Services) happily told delegates that K-sat’s impressive Earth station site in Svalbard could now be seen in the latest Mission Impossible movie.  She explained that as a resident of the Arctic and that climate change in the Arctic was happening 4-times faster than the planet in general. 

Dr. Marco Esposito (Managing Director, cosine Remote Sensing) said his core business was in building measurement solutions for far-distant parts of space, and closer to Earth its backbone business was in sensors and matched with powerful computing. They are working with Australia using cosine’s equipment for monitoring landslides, floods and related events. 

By Chris Forrester

Steve Collar welcomed SmallSat participants to Amsterdam in the Netherlands as a Dutch resident of 25 years, and explained how his new role at SWISSto12 had come about, and what the company offered. He was previously CEO at SES. 

Collar told delegates that the industry that everyone in the room was involved in, was ‘cool’. Indeed, SWISSto12 was on a terrific journey, with 40 patents in its portfolio and was the first emerging player to win a contract to get a satellite to GEO. Making our satellites smaller, cheaper and thanks to 3D additive manufacturing helped propel the business to its present place. 

But, he said that broadcast, and DTH in particular and a key revenue earner for satellite operators was absolutely in decline. Broadcast revenues to the satellite industry peaked in 2015.

He suggested that industry mergers and acquisition activity was profound although some of the marriages had yet to settle down. “I think Direct-to-Device offers tremendous potential although in my view satellite is not likely to replace ground-based connectivity.”

“Smaller, faster and cheaper” was SWISSto12’s mantra, he said. “By being more nimble we can offer flexible satellites for our clients, and these depend on HummingSat. Every nation on the planet now better understands that satellite solves their demand for sovereign independence.”