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

This week: Two Irish companies land significant European backing. In Galway, ÉireComposites has completed three carbon fibre components for an ESA satellite that will monitor the ozone layer; Pilot Photonics, the DCU spin-out, has been approved for up to €10.4m from the EU's flagship deep-tech fund, a month after agreeing to supply lasers to Mbryonics; More student rocketry, plus a rundown of this week’s space jobs in Ireland and at ESA.

ÉireComposites has built three carbon fibre components for a high-precision optical instrument aboard Altius, a European Space Agency satellite that will monitor the ozone layer and track greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.

The Galway company says they are the largest satellite components ever made in Ireland to be launched into space, and the first Irish-made parts destined for a satellite's exterior

The components are baffles: dark, precisely shaped structures that fit around the instrument and block stray light from reaching its sensor, in much the same way a lens hood keeps the sun off a photographer's shot.

Altius will work by watching sunlight pass through the Earth's atmosphere and measuring how much of it is absorbed by the ozone layer. Light arriving from the wrong direction would corrupt the reading.

Altius is scheduled to launch at the end of 2028 on a Vega-C rocket from Kourou. ÉireComposites made the baffles for OIP Sensor Systems, the Belgian firm building the optical instrument, with support from ESA, Enterprise Ireland and Údarás na Gaeltachta.

"The Altius satellite marks a major milestone for Irish participation in space exploration,” said Tomás Flanagan, chief executive of ÉireComposites.

“The three stray light baffles will become the first optical subsystem manufactured in Ireland and the largest satellite components produced in the country to be launched into space. It demonstrates how Irish advanced manufacturing can play a meaningful role in supporting complex international space missions and future space innovation.”

Dublin firm Pilot Photonics has been approved for a recommended investment of up to €10.4m from the European Innovation Council Accelerator, part of Horizon Europe.

The EIC Accelerator combines a grant of up to €2.5m with equity of between €500,000 and €10m. The company says the money will go towards product qualification, high-volume manufacturing and hiring in Ireland and abroad.

Pilot Photonics develops integrated photonic chips, which use light rather than electrical signals to generate and carry information. They draw less power, handle more data, and take up less room and weight, which is why satellite makers want them. The chips produce very clean radio signals, with applications in AI data centres, satellite communications and 5G and 6G networks.

Last month the company announced it will supply tunable lasers to Mbryonics, the Galway laser communications firm, for optical transceivers capable of terabit speeds in space.

Peter Burke, Minister for Enterprise, Tourism and Employment, tied the award to Europe's strategic autonomy in 6G, satellite and space systems, and secure communications.

CEO William Oppermann said: “This support gives us the platform to move from breakthrough innovation to industrial scale-up, building a stronger team in Ireland, qualifying our products for global customers, and establishing the supply chain required to compete internationally.”

Kevin Burke, Enterprise Ireland’s National Director for Horizon Europe said the support was “international recognition of the breakthrough nature of Pilot Photonics’ technology, the progress the team have already made in commercialising their products, and the potential to now scale their business globally”.

Pilot Photonics is a spin-out of Dublin City University, headquartered on the Glasnevin campus with around 20 employees.

Enterprise Ireland is a shareholder and invested in the most recent round. The company also holds a €1m contract with the European Space Agency to space-proof satellite infrastructure.

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US satellite operator Loft Orbital has signed a multi-launch agreement with MaiaSpace, the ArianeGroup subsidiary building the Maia rocket. The first flight under the deal is expected in 2028. MaiaSpace said the agreement takes it past half of all capacity sold for its first three years of operation - before Maia has flown at all.

Every Loft Orbital satellite to date has flown on a SpaceX Transporter rideshare mission. In recent weeks, several Transporter customers have said SpaceX is not accepting reservations beyond late 2028 or early 2029. Adam Spice, chief financial officer of Rocket Lab, told SpaceNews there "seems to be a panic setting in."

Loft has some cover through Exolaunch, the German launch aggregator, which has secured a dedicated SpaceX flight to sell as a rideshare. But Emmanuelle Meric, who runs Loft's European operations, said choosing a European launch provider supports a more sovereign European space ecosystem.

Maia is not yet flying. MaiaSpace is working towards a suborbital test in early 2027 and a first orbital flight in the second half of that year, with elements of the first two flight models due at its launch site in French Guiana by the end of this year.

Réaltra built the VIKI video telemetry and GEKI GNSS systems flying on Ariane 6. MaiaSpace is an ArianeGroup subsidiary. No Irish content on Maia has been announced.

Irish university rocketry teams took part in two British competitions in recent days: Race 2 Space, the propulsion competition run by Airborne Engineering at Westcott in Buckinghamshire, and Mach 26 in Scotland.

Among them was ULAS HiPR, the University of Limerick's student rocketry team, which entered Race 2 Space for the first time this year with a two-kilonewton liquid engine. Liquid engines burn a fuel and an oxidiser pumped together into a combustion chamber, rather than the solid-fuel motors most student rockets use. They are harder to build, but they can be throttled and shut down mid-flight, which is why orbital rockets rely on them.

The engine burns isopropyl alcohol and nitrous oxide. It was designed by the students and 3D printed in metal at Irish Manufacturing Research's Advanced Manufacturing Lab in Mullingar, then machined and assembled at UL. Printing allows internal cooling channels that are difficult to machine conventionally. The team describes it as the first additively manufactured liquid rocket engine built in the Republic.

The team fired it on the test stand at Westcott on Wednesday. Irish Rocketry, the volunteer body that supports the teams, confirmed the hot fire was successful. ULAS HiPR describes it as the first hot fire of an additively manufactured liquid engine developed by an Irish university team.

Teams from University College Cork and Munster Technological University also travelled to Mach 26. UCC's Rocketry and Space Exploration Society made its competitive debut at Mach-25 last year with Prometheus, a solid-motor rocket that reached 2,259 metres.

Irish Rocketry, set up in 2006, supports the teams and runs launches under the safety codes of the US Tripoli Rocketry Association, which also certifies Irish flyers.

🚀 Réaltra Space Systems, the Dublin firm selected for CASSINI Batch 7 in May, joined the rest of the cohort in Vilnius for a two-day meeting with their lead coaches. EUSPA says the programme's next phase leans on sales training and speed networking, alongside mastermind sessions on scaling, growth and team wellbeing. CASSINI is the EU's flagship space accelerator. Réaltra and Celtonn, in Batch 6, are the first Irish companies to appear in consecutive cohorts.

🚀 Infinite Orbits, a French satellite servicing company, and Arianespace have signed a memorandum of understanding on direct-to-geostationary launch services, aimed at European launch opportunities from 2029. Geostationary orbit sits roughly 36,000km above the equator, where satellites match the Earth's rotation and appear to hover over a fixed point; reaching it usually means a transfer orbit and onboard propulsion, while a direct-to-GEO service would deliver spacecraft straight there. The two companies frame the work as strengthening European sovereign access to the orbit. A memorandum of understanding is not a contract, only a statement of intent to work together.

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ESA Phi-Lab Ireland - technical assessment closes 17 July

A reminder for anyone preparing a proposal for Phi-Lab Ireland's Open Call 2026, covered here over recent weeks. Applicants who complete the registration form can request a Technical Needs Assessment: an initial scoring of the proposal, and an assessment of whether Irish Manufacturing Research or SEAM at South East Technological University can support the work. Writing on LinkedIn, programme manager Rob Conway-Kenny said the assessment gives applicants access to technical staff at both centres while a project idea is still taking shape.

The assessment is optional and closes 17 July. Full proposals are due 8 September.

→ esaphilab.ie

ESA Future PNT ITT - closes 7 August

ESA's Future Navigation department has issued an Invitation to Tender for in-orbit demonstrators in next-generation positioning, navigation and timing. The call has two technical priorities: quantum sensor technologies (using the quantum properties of atoms to measure position and time with far greater precision than current satellite systems) and machine learning for automation of navigation systems. Open to companies from ESA member states, Ireland included.

Deadline: 7 August 2026. → navisp.esa.int

PICTURE: Two ESA satellites left Nice this week by ship, bound for Europe's spaceport in French Guiana and a joint launch on a Vega-C rocket in September. FLEX, an Earth Explorer mission, carries a spectrometer that detects the faint fluorescence plants emit as they photosynthesise. The glow is invisible to the eye but varies with plant health, letting scientists track photosynthetic activity and spot stressed vegetation worldwide. Alongside it is Copernicus Sentinel-3C, the third of its series, measuring ocean height, sea and ice surface temperatures, ocean colour and sea ice thickness, and over land, vegetation, wildfires and the water level of lakes and rivers. The crossing takes two weeks, docking at Pariacabo on 13 July, followed by an eight-week launch campaign. Vega-C is the rocket that will also carry Altius, the ozone mission with Irish-made baffles, in 2028.

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

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