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

This week: We go to Newry, where Resonate Testing has installed the largest thermal vacuum chamber on the island and expects its first outside tests within weeks. ESA signs the first Launcher Challenge contracts, committing €543.6m to three rocket builders and opening three supply chains Irish firms can pitch into. Also: SpaceX heads to Louisiana for pad capacity, ESA opens a space policy course to students of any discipline, and the Nancy Grace Roman telescope launches on Sunday. Plus the funding calendar - the ESA BASS deadline falls tomorrow - and more than 20 roles open across Mbryonics, Manna and InnaLabs.

Before a satellite goes into orbit, somebody has to try to break it on the ground.

That’s what Resonate Testing does. Based in Newry a few miles north of the border, it puts hardware through everything it will meet on the way up and once it gets there: the shaking of a rocket launch, the shock of stage separation, and then the airless cold and heat of space.

The aim is to find the weak connection in Newry, where an engineer can fix it, rather than 300 kilometres up, where nobody can.

The company was founded 10 years ago by Tom and Donna Mallon, employs 18 people, and works across batteries, medical devices, and packaging as well as space. Its founders came out of Northern Ireland’s aerospace industry.

The newest piece of equipment is a thermal vacuum chamber, or TVAC, which the company says is the largest on the island. It is a sealed steel chamber measuring 1.2 metres on each side, with pumps that draw out almost all the air until the pressure inside matches that of space. Panels lining the walls then heat and cool the hardware, cycling it between roughly minus 70 to plus 120 degrees, which is what a satellite experiences passing repeatedly from sunlight into the Earth’s shadow.

These conditions break things that work perfectly well in a lab. With no air, heat cannot carry away as it normally would, so parts overheat or freeze. Some materials give off gas in a vacuum, which can then settle on lenses or sensors and ruin them. The constant expansion and contraction finds bad joints. At that size, the chamber takes CubeSats and subsystems rather than whole satellites, which still go to larger facilities in Britain or the Continent.

The TVAC is the first stage. A larger facility is planned on the same site, though the company is still waiting on the funding to build it.

Resonate Testing says it brought the chamber in to answer long backlogs at established national test centres in Britain and Europe. For companies in the Republic, it means no longer having to ship hardware abroad and wait.

Mark Donnelly, business development manager at Resonate, said most Irish space companies develop to Technology Readiness Levels 1-3, on the 9-point scale running from a concept at TRL 1 to flight-proven hardware at TRL 9. Resonate is working at TRL 3-8.

“The southern space companies are basically developing products at TRL 1 to 3, where we work at TRL 3 to 8, getting them ready for in-orbit applications, essentially.”

Cross-border movement is relatively straightforward, he said, “as long as we state that the goods are coming to us and they’re not to be resold, not moved into a different marketplace.”

Space accounts for about 35 percent of the company’s work, and Irish companies for one-fifth to one-third of that, with Britain and Europe making up most of the rest. Almost all the Irish work comes from the Republic. Donnelly said the North’s space sector has so far mostly been downstream, data and services rather than hardware - so while Resonate works with companies there, it does not test for them.

“If somebody was to require a test from, say, Dublin we have the TVAC, vibration, shock, all under one roof, as we say.

“We’re really able to sell that one-stop, one-location testing. Not too many places in Europe can do that, and certainly not in the UK or Ireland.”

Today's issue comes from an hour with Resonate Testing in Newry: the island's largest thermal vacuum chamber, why Irish hardware crosses the border to get ready for space, and how you make a small fortune in New Space. One email a week. Subscribe

Donnelly argues the geography is the company’s main asset. “If we were in Dublin or Belfast, it would be a bit more awkward to capture both markets,” he said. “I think it’s a really exciting time for the space cluster, north and south. We tend to treat them as separate entities, but it’s a small island. Ideally, we see it as an Irish space cluster.”

“What strikes you about the Irish space sector is how tightly connected it is, how small a community it is, and how those relationships are being built out.”

The chamber has been running since mid-May and was formally opened by the North’s infrastructure minister, Liz Kimmins, at the end of June. No external customer has been through it yet.

“We expect to do some testing in the TVAC over the next month. We are awaiting completion of our commissioning,” said founder and managing director Tom Mallon.

“We have scheduled in a number of tests for later in the year, but there will be an element of continuous learning even once fully commissioned,” he said by email.

Much of the company’s work is covered by non-disclosure agreements. “We rarely have the opportunity to share some of the cool stuff we get to test,” Mallon said.

Funding from Invest NI helped the company acquire the chamber, through its Project Definition Grants and its Selective Financial Assistance Fund.

The cluster is some way from being built. On the company’s own figures, Irish space work accounts for around a tenth of its business, with most of the space side coming from Britain and Europe.

A second facility on the same site has planning permission and the support of Newry, Mourne and Down District Council, but funding has not been secured. Mallon said the company will start building as soon as it is, with completion targeted for the first quarter of 2029.

The new building would be aimed at space work at TRL 3 to 8 and would replace the cleanroom tent the company uses now with a permanent cleanroom. It would add 15 to 20 posts to the current 18.

“These will be careers as opposed to jobs,” Mallon said.

Gross value added, or GVA, measures how much a business adds to the local economy. It’s what agencies like Invest NI weigh up when deciding what to fund.

“There is no getting away from the fact that border counties, North and South, are evaluating and seeking projects that contribute to and support the expansion of Gross Value Added for our economies,” Mallon said.

On the business itself he is more cautious. “Space is a strange business,” he said. “How do you make a small fortune in New Space? Start with a large one.”

The company, he said, is confidently cautious.

ESA signed the first contracts under its European Launcher Challenge today, committing €543.6 million across three launch providers.

Isar Aerospace takes the largest share at €197.8 million for its Spectrum rocket, to carry up to 1,000 kg to low Earth orbit from Andøya in Norway. Its first flight in 2025 lasted 30 seconds, and a second rocket is being prepared. The contract is funded mainly by Germany with contributions from Austria and Norway.

Rocket Factory Augsburg gets €186.9 million for RFA One, a three-stage rocket targeting 500 kg to a 500 km sun-synchronous orbit, flying from SaxaVord in Shetland. Germany funds most of it, with a UK contribution.

PLD Space gets €158.9 million for Miura 5, designed to carry up to 540 kg to sun-synchronous orbit from Kourou in French Guiana, building on the Miura 1 demonstrator flown in 2023. Spain funds most of it, with a German contribution.

A fourth award to MaiaSpace has not been concluded. ESA says the process is nearing completion and expects it to resume in the coming weeks.

Funds unlock as each company meets milestones, and every provider must reach orbit before 2028 to demonstrate it can deliver.

Proposals were assessed by an ESA evaluation board on business case, engineering quality, resources, schedule and compliance. “Now it is up to the challengers to prove they can deliver reliable launch services for Europe and compete,” said Lucia Linares, ESA's head of strategy and launches for space transportation. “Getting to space is not easy and never guaranteed.”

🚀 SpaceX announced it would build a new spaceport in Louisiana combining deepwater port access, propellant supply and marine recovery of Starship hardware, along with engine refurbishment and fairing recovery. SpaceX said range scheduling and pad turnaround at Cape Canaveral and Vandenberg are constraining a rising flight rate, and that the Louisiana site gives it capacity that does not depend on existing pads freeing up. Construction begins in late 2026.

🚀 ESA is taking applications for a five-day residential course on space policy, held in Belgium from 7 to 11 December, and there is no science requirement — sociology, economics, politics, law and history all count. It covers how European space cooperation was built and how ESA is governed, and ends with a mock ministerial, where students negotiate as national delegations in the same format ESA uses to agree its real budgets. Irish applicants qualify. Accommodation and meals are covered, plus up to €350 towards travel. Deadline 27 September. Apply | Full details

The best person for your next role might not live near your office—or even in the same country.

More companies are realizing they don't need to open entities everywhere just to access global talent. Instead, they're using EOR to hire internationally faster, stay compliant, and avoid building local infrastructure before they're ready.

Oyster's EOR helps companies hire, pay, and support employees in 180+ countries while Oyster handles payroll, compliance, taxes, and local employment requirements.

See how it works

ESA BASS Kick-Starts - feasibility-study funding up to €75,000 (75% of eligible costs, €100,000 total project cap) under the ACCESS programme. Deadline 28 August 2026 - tomorrow. Rolling tranches continue after this one. Accessed via ESA Space Solutions Centre Ireland. business.esa.int/funding

ESA Phi-Lab Ireland Open Call 2026 - Irish Manufacturing Research's ESA Phi-Lab (Mullingar) offers ESA innovation seed funding of up to €400,000 for projects under two years, covering advanced materials, additive manufacturing and structural analysis, plus mentorship and access to research infrastructure. Deadline 8 September 2026. No change this week.

Horizon Europe EU Space Research Call 2026 (HORIZON-CL4-2026-SPACE-03) - €90.97m total budget across 8 topics, managed by HaDEA, part of Cluster 4 Destination 5. Deadline 3 September 2026, 17:00 Brussels time. HaDEA

An artist’s impression of NASA’s Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope, which is due to lift off from Kennedy Space Center on 30 August aboard a Falcon Heavy rocket. Named after the woman who became NASA’s first chief of astronomy, the 2.4-metre observatory will conduct a wide-field infrared survey of the sky, measuring the light of a billion galaxies over its five-year mission.

Europe has supplied the spacecraft’s star trackers and batteries, as well as electron-multiplying detectors for its coronagraph, and will provide deep-space communications support through the 35-metre antenna at New Norcia, part of ESA’s southern hemisphere tracking station near Perth, Australia.

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

Know an Irish space startup we should cover?

Email [email protected]