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

This week: Réaltra Space Systems Engineering is heading to Prague at the end of September to pitch European venture capital for the first time, with plans to double its 20-strong Dublin workforce within a year and open a US office. We sat down with Chief Innovation Officer Michael Martin to hear how the pitch came together, from the EU's CASSINI accelerator through to the accidental Covid-era testing network that got them here. Elsewhere: the EU signed off on 66 more satellites for IRIS², taking the constellation past 348 and total investment past €15.6bn.

August 13, 2026

Réaltra Space Systems Engineering plans to double its workforce within a year and open its first office in the United States, as the Dublin company prepares to pitch European venture capital investors for the first time at the end of September.

The company employs 20 people at Clonshaugh in north Dublin, with two engineers in Spain and one in Belfast. It built the cameras that filmed the James Webb Space Telescope separating from Ariane 5 in 2021, and supplies the video telemetry kits that provide the live pictures from Ariane 6 launches.

Michael Martin, Chief Innovation Officer, said the new jobs would be across all areas but "particularly on the whole sales and business development side". Réaltra has advertised very little in the way of vacancies until now. Asked whether that was about to change, he said it would, "very, very soon".

The pitch takes place in Prague and closes out the EU's CASSINI accelerator, a six-month programme for space companies from which Réaltra has drawn about 100 hours of mentoring. It will be the company's first structured approach to institutional investors since it was set up in 2017.

"You're going up in front of very top venture capitalists and they want to see if they're going to get a return on their money," Martin told SpaceTech Ireland. "So we have to make sure we get it right. You don't get many chances with these kinds of people." Fresh orders and delivery deadlines kept getting in the way of outreach. CASSINI has “given us a focus."

Réaltra is going to investors with an expanding product catalogue. Over the past two years it has turned the engineering done for ArianeGroup and for ESA's PLATO exoplanet mission into five or six product lines: the launcher cameras, built heavily enough to survive stage separation, and a newer generation of smaller, lighter cameras for satellites; a family of battery types and the power distribution to go with them; and a satellite navigation receiver, a version of which flew as a standalone experiment on Ariane 6's first launch.

A secure network switch developed with the Vienna firm TTTech is a new addition. The switch is designed to handle data between a spacecraft’s subsystems. "We can now supply, particularly small launcher companies, an affordable, secure switch," he said. It handles the tightly controlled communications launcher builders want, "because they don't like just random bursts". TTTech supplies the underlying chip, which has flown on NASA's Artemis programme. Réaltra's part is taking commercial electronics and making them fit to fly.

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Martin praised Enterprise Ireland and ESA for putting Réaltra on the world stage, but cautioned that agency work on its own will not raise money.

"You're not going to be a company that VCs would invest in just on ESA programmes or Enterprise Ireland funding. You won't. The rules, the regulations, they're not making big profit out of those. But we want to use those. That's our R&D side. We want to develop new technologies, new products, and then take those products out, and that'll be a good stream of revenue coming into the company."

He puts the American market at roughly 60 per cent of global space spending, and says Réaltra cannot reach it from Dublin with a commercial team of one - Danny Gleeson, the chief commercial officer and a co-founder. "Danny is one person, and very limited in what he can do and where he can cover in the world."

Florida is the likeliest location for a US office, though space clusters in Cleveland and Texas have approached Réaltra. Diarmuid Corry, one of the founders, set up a US operation in a previous business. "So we're not just a completely naive Irish company coming over to America on their own," Martin said. However, none of it happens without the investment.

Asked about Irish funding, Martin said he was not aware of any investors in space in Ireland. Irish funds the company has spoken to found the sector hard to get to grips with, though some showed interest. American money would be easier to raise, "but I don't think we are ready to do that yet". Europe comes first. "There is a big positive atmosphere towards investing in space now compared to even two years ago," he said.

What would he change about operating in Ireland? Martin went straight to the absence of a single body with responsibility for space. Policy sits with the Department of Enterprise, Tourism and Employment while the ESA relationship is run by Enterprise Ireland, and he thinks the split costs the sector. "A focal point, some sort of space agency, would be a big help," he said. "For any company to be successful you have to have a strategy and drive, being led in the right direction."

"The money spent in space will get massive returns. It's not wasted money," he said. "So why not put more into it, get all the Irish that are working in space companies all over the world back into a really vibrant space industry here?"

More than half the engineers at Réaltra are Irish-trained and six former UCD/DCU interns are now on staff. He also thinks a national focal point would draw investors in behind it, addressing the gap he describes in Irish venture funding.

What has changed is the confidence. He points to Mbryonics, the Galway optical communications company, winning work in the United States against established American firms.

"That would have been unheard of five years ago," he said. "There's great momentum there. There's fantastic people who want to see Ireland succeed in the space industry and just want that leadership that will lead it."

Some of that capability was built by accident. When Covid closed the borders in 2020, Réaltra's engineers were packed and due to fly to Germany the following morning to begin qualification testing on the Ariane hardware. ArianeGroup would not move the schedule, so the company went looking for whatever it could find closer to home.

A vibration test house in Newry, Resonate Testing, agreed to adapt its shaker table to space standards. In the course of the conversation it emerged that the owner's son had worked at a military test site in Australia and had seen how shock testing was done there.

"He said, God, I think I can recreate that here," Martin said. "And all of a sudden we were able to develop a shock tester with them." John O'Donoghue at Enbio in Co Tipperary, who had done the coating for ESA's Solar Orbiter, adapted one of his vacuum chambers for thermal cycling. Compliance Engineering Ireland in Blanchardstown, which normally tests consumer electronics for electromagnetic interference, adapted its anechoic chambers.

The PLATO unit was qualified almost entirely on the island. "That was the first class A deep space product certified in Ireland," Martin said. "That's a huge pride and joy for us. All the testing was done in Ireland." Only the cryogenic work had to go abroad, to France. Resonate has since installed a thermal vacuum chamber of its own, which means there are now two providers on the island. "It's a very important resource to have in this country," Martin said. "A very difficult and very expensive resource to get made abroad."

Six years on he says the facilities are a commercial advantage because they let Réaltra move at a speed the primes cannot. He cites one project where the customer took three months to sign off a project number and a name, in which time Réaltra had built the first prototype. Having test houses within a couple of hours' drive, he said, is what makes that possible.

The same logic applies to the companies around them. Réaltra did much of the early electronic design work for Mbryonics when the Galway company was starting out, and the two still compare notes on funding even though their technical paths have diverged. "We're too small to isolate ourselves," Martin said.

Réaltra grew out of ACRA Control, a company set up in Dublin in the early 1990s by four DCU engineering graduates, that changed the way aircraft flight testing was done by giving pilots live data in the air, where results had previously come back weeks later in spreadsheets. Curtiss-Wright bought the company in July 2011 for €42 million.

Two of those who stayed on, Diarmuid Corry (CTO) and Danny Gleeson (CCO), watched the American owner concentrate on its home market and turn away work from ESA, while Ireland paid its subscription and had almost no hardware companies able to bid for it. In 2017 they went to Paddy White, chief executive of Realtime Technologies in Clonshaugh, which had manufactured ACRA's systems, and proposed a space division that would do the design work while Realtime handled the build. Martin joined at the same time to run engineering. Paddy White has since retired; Paul White is now chief executive.

The first contract was PLATO, and it was a large one for a company that had just started: €3.4 million from the German prime contractor OHB to hold the temperature of the mission's 26 cameras steady to within five thousandths of a degree over a week. "That is a small startup company. That's a mission-critical device," Martin said. "So for ESA to give us that was a big, big, big trust."

ESA says PLATO is expected to launch in March 2027.

🚀 On 7 August, the European Commission and SpaceRISE (SES, Eutelsat, Hispasat) signed off on 66 more satellites for IRIS², taking the constellation to 348 and total investment past €15.6bn - up from about €10.6bn/282 satellites in December 2024. Hispasat, one of the three SpaceRISE partners, is the prime contractor for the ground segment - antenna infrastructure, control systems and the ground network - and has put its own investment at more than €1.6bn. First launches targeted for 2029. Ireland chairs the EU's Competitiveness Council for Space through its EU Presidency, giving it direct input into the Space Act as IRIS² scales up.

🚀 Irish Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (EirSEDS) has confirmed its second National Student Space Conference (NSSC) for 8 October, held at Munster Technological University as part of Space Week. Admission is free for university students and recent graduates, with talks, workshops, and networking planned alongside Irish space companies. Eventbrite

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ESA opens ideas call for in-space servicing and manufacturing

ESA has opened submissions for a Strategic Initiative on In-Space Servicing, Assembly and Manufacturing (ISAM), inviting teams to propose mission, service, or infrastructure concepts addressing two priorities: a multi-user orbital refuelling network, and extending the working life of high-value satellites. Selected teams join a five-day Innovation Sprint at ESA ESTEC in the Netherlands, from 23–27 November, working alongside ESA experts to develop their concepts further. Winning teams can then apply for a Cooperative Agreement worth up to €200,000. The call is open to industry, SMEs, startups, research centres, and academia across ESA member and associate states. Deadline 14 September 2026. OSIP.

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. ESA Phi-Lab Ireland Open Call

PICTURE: A photo taken from the Irish Air Corps C295 plane as it flew 550 kilometres off the west coast during the total solar eclipse. Aboard was a team of scientists from Dunsink Observatory, Trinity College Dublin, Technical University Dublin and the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics.

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

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