Welcome to SpaceTech Ireland — a fast, Ireland-focused read on the space economy.

This week: Irish companies won €12.9 million in ESA contracts in the first half of the year, according to figures published as Minister of State Alan Dillon represented Ireland at the International Space Summit in Paris. Isar Aerospace's Spectrum rocket has reached orbit from Norway on its second flight. In Ireland, the Irish Space Association will hold a Space Workforce Summit in Dublin on 12 October, and Irish teams have until 2 October to enter ESA's challenge to build with lunar soil. This edition also lists 15 jobs across Ireland, the UK and Europe in an expanded jobs section.

September 10, 2026

Irish companies secured €12.9 million in European Space Agency contracts during the first six months of 2026, according to new figures released as Minister Alan Dillon attended this week's International Space Summit in Paris.

Some 130 Irish companies are now engaging with ESA, up from around 120 in 2025, while four companies secured their first ESA contracts, said Dillon.

The €12.9m half-year total puts Irish companies at just over half the record €24.56m secured during the whole of 2024.

"Four firms winning their first ESA contracts is particularly encouraging," Dillon said. "It shows the potential for more Irish businesses and emerging start-ups to enter this market, develop new technologies and compete globally."

At ESA's ministerial council in Bremen last November, the Government increased Ireland's subscription to ESA programmes by €40 million, bringing the total to €170 million over five years.

Dillon met President Emmanuel Macron and Germany's Research, Technology and Space Minister, Dorothee Bär, during the summit.

On Ireland's behalf he endorsed six non-binding declarations. Three back a more coordinated European space policy, a joint ESA–EU plan for European space transport to 2045, and Copernicus, the EU's Earth observation programme.

The other three support the International Telecommunication Union as the UN body that allocates radio frequencies and satellite orbits, open and reliable scientific data from space, and the safe and sustainable use of space.

The French government says nearly 120 foreign delegations are attending, at the invitation of President Macron and his special envoys, the ESA astronaut Thomas Pesquet and the entrepreneur Hélène Huby.

Opening the summit on Wednesday, Macron said more than 50 projects were expected to be signed over the two days, covering French partnerships with Germany and the United Arab Emirates, an agreement with Loft Orbital, and announcements involving The Exploration Company and Amazon's launch arrangement with Arianespace.

"Europe is taking its destiny into its own hands, including in space," he wrote on X, calling for investment "to build a powerful Europe, independent even in space."

SpaceX and Blue Origin cancelled plans to attend, according to the French government. Politico reported that an official in the White House office of science and technology policy told several American companies on a call the previous week that attending could be read as tacit support for EU policy positions.

ESA director general Josef Aschbacher addressed the exploration session on Wednesday evening, setting out what he called a practical pathway for Europe's future in exploration and asking member states to decide how far they want to commit.

Ahead of the summit he said ESA's role was to give Europe "the capabilities, technologies and confidence to think bigger, move faster and pursue its own ambitions."

The Irish Space Association, Regional Skills and the Space Industry Skillnet are holding a Space Workforce Summit at the Guinness Enterprise Centre in Dublin on Monday 12 October.

The summit follows Beyond the Horizon: Building Ireland's Space Workforce, the national skills report launched last December at a UCD event. It was led by Regional Skills at the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science, with the Irish Space Association, the Space Industry Skillnet and Space Life Sciences Ireland.

The report found gaps in specialist engineering, systems engineering, quality assurance and AI and machine learning, and in project management and regulatory knowledge.

Recruitment is hardest at mid-career level. Some 39% of companies cited competition from other engineering sectors and 20% competition from tech and IT firms, with a median 10 weeks to fill a role.

The summit is aimed at industry, education and training providers, support organisations and government. Registration is open.

Isar Aerospace's Spectrum rocket reached orbit and released its payloads on its second flight, launched from Andoya Space in Norway at 21:12 Irish time on 5 September. ESA called it the first launch to orbit from continental Europe. Isar says it is the first commercial space company from Europe to put satellites into orbit.

The first Spectrum flight, in March 2025, ended about 30 seconds after lift-off when the rocket fell into the sea.

This flight carried five CubeSats and one experiment, chosen through the German Space Agency's Microlauncher Competition. The competition offers universities and start-ups low-cost access to space and is funded through ESA's Boost! programme.

Isar is the first company in ESA's European Launcher Challenge to reach orbit. ESA signed contracts worth €543.6 million with Isar, Rocket Factory Augsburg and PLD Space on 27 August, of which Isar's is worth €197.8 million. Each company must reach orbit by the end of 2027 before ESA money supports operational launches through 2030.

A fourth contract, with MaiaSpace, is still being finalised.

🚀 ArianeGroup CEO Christophe Bruneau says the company is studying whether Ariane 6 launch rates can rise beyond the planned 9-10 annually from 2027, amid expectations of a European satellite-deployment bottleneck approaching 2030. ESA is also examining higher Vega-C launch rates. Réaltra is in the Ariane 6 supply chain through its video telemetry hardware.

🚀 ESA Phi-Lab Ireland's Open Call 2026 has closed, with a stronger response from Irish companies than last year's round. Phi-Lab Ireland manager Rob Conway-Kenny said the call has produced new partnerships between companies and research institutes across ESA member states. Details on future Open Calls will follow in the coming months. More on this in SpaceTech Ireland next week.

🚀 ESA Academy is taking applications for its Fly Your Satellite! Design Booster programme, which supports student teams building CubeSats or PocketQubes through the design phase. Teams get training, feedback from ESA specialists and access to the CubeSat Support Facility cleanroom at ESA's education centre in Belgium. The programme runs about 18 months. Applications close 2 October. EIRSAT-1, Ireland's first satellite, came through Fly Your Satellite! in 2017.

🚀 Speaking of EIRSAT-1, the UCD team that built it transmitted the name and address of every school in Ireland from the satellite back to Earth before it burned up on 4 September last year. To mark the anniversary, UCD's Centre for Space Research (C-Space) is giving each of those schools a certificate, in English and as Gaeilge, recording the moment its name was sent down from orbit.

The Exploration Company (France/Germany) - $450m Series C, which the company says is the largest ever raised by a European space company, bringing its total to about $680m. The money funds the Nyx cargo capsule and Storm engine. Founder Hélène Huby is one of Macron's two special envoys for the Paris summit.

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ESA–ESRIC Space Resources Challenge - closes Friday 2 October.

ESA and the European Space Resources Innovation Centre want technologies that turn lunar soil, or regolith, into bricks, blocks, landing pads or printed structures. Ireland is one of 25 eligible states, and universities, start-ups, companies, consortia and individuals can apply. Five teams will receive €50,000 each and a field test at ESA's LUNA facility in Cologne in summer 2027. The winner gets a €500,000 agreement to develop the technology towards a possible future demonstration in space. A second €500,000 prize from the Luxembourg Space Agency is open only to companies registered in Luxembourg. Teams without a company can enter the first stage but need a registered legal entity in an eligible state for the second. A webinar runs Tuesday 15 September at 15:30 Irish time. src.esa.int

PICTURE: Two Earth-watching satellites, FLEX and Copernicus Sentinel-3C, will launch on the same Vega-C rocket from French Guiana on 15 September at 2.21 am Irish time. Sentinel-3C is the third satellite in the Copernicus Sentinel-3 series that watches oceans, ice, wildfires, and plant cover every day. It measures sea-surface height and temperature, ocean colour, inland water levels, and how land and ice are changing. FLEX is designed to measure the faint glow plants give off during photosynthesis, so scientists can map the health of the world’s vegetation from space. The photo shows technicians preparing to load hydrazine propellant into Sentinel-3C, behind them. ESA describes it as one of the most hazardous parts of launch preparation.

Next week: more funding, contracts, and careers in Ireland's space economy.

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