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

This week: Two European launches scrubbed on the same day. Réaltra is preparing to raise capital after hitting €3.5 million in revenue. ATU wants to pull western SMEs into the space supply chain. And Ireland's Horizon Europe drawdown has crossed €1 billion.

Both of Europe’s most anticipated launches on Wednesday were scrubbed within hours of each other - one by weather in New Zealand, the other by a stray boat in the Arctic.

Rocket Lab postponed the launch of its Electron rocket carrying ESA's first two Celeste satellites due to unfavourable weather conditions over the Māhia Launch Complex in New Zealand.

The mission, designated "Daughter of the Stars," had been scheduled for a window opening at 10:14 CET (9:14 Irish time) on Wednesday morning. Cloud cover and lightning risk at the pad violated launch commit criteria, and Rocket Lab confirmed the scrub early on Wednesday.

It was already the second delay for Celeste. The mission had originally been set for launch the previous week before being pushed to 25 March due to weather.

A weather system is now passing through the region, and Rocket Lab says a new target date will be set once conditions clear.

The Celeste LEO-PNT in-orbit demonstration mission will carry the first two satellites of ESA's initiative for satellite navigation in low Earth orbit. The programme will test next-generation navigation technologies and new frequency bands to evaluate whether a LEO layer could complement Europe's Galileo system in medium Earth orbit.

The two CubeSats were developed by consortia led by GMV (Spain) and Thales Alenia Space (France), and will be deployed to a circular orbit around 510 km above Earth.

Then, on Wednesday evening, Germany's Isar Aerospace got its countdown for the second Spectrum flight all the way to T-minus 3 seconds before the flight aborted at Andøya Spaceport in Norway. The launch had been held earlier after an unauthorised boat entered the exclusion zone around the pad.

The range eventually cleared, but the abort at T-3 - just before engine ignition - ended the attempt. No new launch date has been announced and the reason for the abort is not yet publicly known.

The stakes were high for Isar. Had Spectrum reached orbit, it would have become the first rocket ever to do so from European soil. The mission, named "Onward and Upward," was Spectrum's second flight — a year after its debut ended 30 seconds after liftoff when a vent valve unexpectedly opened, causing the rocket to crash into the sea near the launch pad.

The January 2026 attempt was also scrubbed due to a faulty pressurisation valve, and bad weather pushed the March window twice before Wednesday's attempt.

Both missions are ESA-backed - Celeste through ESA's navigation programme, Spectrum through the Boost! microlauncher initiative - and both remain grounded as of Thursday morning.

→ ESA Navigation: esa.int/Celeste → Isar Aerospace updates: isaraerospace.com

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Dublin-based Réaltra Space Systems Engineering is preparing to seek external investment to fund its next growth phase, after posting €3.5 million in revenue in 2025 and projecting 10% growth this year.

The company, founded in 2018 by Danny Gleeson, Diarmuid Corry and Paddy White, builds video camera systems and adapted terrestrial electronics for use on satellites and launch vehicles. Its technology has flown on the Ariane 5 rocket that carried the James Webb Space Telescope and on the Plato satellite's telescope thermal control system.

"We're at the stage where we have products that are proven and have a global market to target," Gleeson told the Business Post. "We can scale into that but to scale, we need investment."

Réaltra is supported by Enterprise Ireland and currently employs 20 staff at its Clonshaugh facility in Dublin.

Gleeson, who has more than 40 years of experience in the sector, said the emergence of large satellite constellations in 2018 created the opening the company was positioned to exploit.

"With old space, if there were 10 satellites launched a year globally it would be considered a lot. Nowadays, it could be 10 a week."

Réaltra is set for another high-profile flight: its VIKI HD video system is on the Ariane 6 rocket launching Amazon's Project Kuiper satellites on 28 April. The company expects to receive flight footage by end of April.

Atlantic Technological University is hosting an event aimed at drawing SMEs from the West and North-West into Ireland's space supply chain - targeting businesses in engineering, electronics, medtech, software, manufacturing, marine, agriculture, moulding, and automation.

The view is that skills that already exist in the region are more transferable to the space sector than many business owners realise. The event will cover funding and grant pathways, showcase projects by Irish companies, and offer networking with sector professionals.

Speakers and participants include ÉireComposites, Enterprise Ireland, the Irish Space Association, Konree Innovation, and regional skills bodies.

ATU’s Sligo Campus 25th May - Register: lnkd.in/dNgSJM6

Isar Aerospace (Germany) - €250 million fundraising round - The Munich-based rocket startup is in talks to raise €250 million in a round that would value the company at €2 billion, Bloomberg reported. Isar has raised more than $600 million to date and is building a production facility near Munich capable of producing up to 40 Spectrum rockets a year.

Rocket Lab (New Zealand/USA) - $190 million HASTE contract - Rocket Lab landed a $190 million block-buy contract on 18 March for 20 hypersonic suborbital test flights under the US Department of Defense's MACH-TB 2.0 programme - the largest launch contract in the company's history. Total backlog now exceeds $2 billion.

Eutelsat (France/UK) - €5 billion refinancing complete - The Franco-British satellite operator completed its €5 billion equity and debt refinancing on 5 March, closing a €1.5 billion senior bond issuance as the final step. The package, backed by the French state, UK government, Bharti Space and CMA CGM, funds deployment of its OneWeb LEO constellation through 2029.

EIF / Join Capital (Pan-European) - €50 million deep-tech fund - The European Investment Fund committed €50 million to Join Capital's Fund III under the InvestEU Defence Equity Facility, targeting 25 early-stage European startups in dual-use space, defence and deep tech.

Horizon Europe Cluster 4 - Space calls 2026 (EU-wide, grants)

Ireland's Horizon Europe drawdown has now passed €1.02 billion - 2.09% of all awards to date, ahead of the 1.6% national target. In Cluster 4 alone, Irish organisations have secured €151 million across 230 projects, with nearly half of all participants being SMEs. Some 245 Irish SMEs have now drawn more than €267 million from Horizon Europe overall.

The 2026 space call (HORIZON-CL4-2026-SPACE-03) remains open with €91 million across eight topics, deadline 3 September 2026. For comparison, last year's call funded 27 projects for €138.6 million from a broader scope. This year's call is more targeted, with four of eight topics focused on European non-dependence in critical space components - radiation-hardened FPGAs, GaN semiconductors, irradiation test facilities and space refuelling interfaces.

The COSMOS4HEplus brokerage platform is accepting matchmaking requests through 3 September. Proposals require consortia of at least three independent entities from three different EU member states or associated countries. Enterprise Ireland NCP Barry Jennings at horizoneurope.ie can advise on consortium-building.

Call page: EU Funding & Tenders Portal, HORIZON-CL4-2026-SPACE-03

ESA NAVISP - Three new Element 1 activities open 1 April: ESA's Navigation Innovation and Support Programme is opening three new Element 1 activities on 1 April, all algorithm-and software-heavy. This is strong territory for Irish SMEs:

→ Activity 124 - Optimisation of PVT engines for LEO measurement diversity (€600k) - navigation algorithm work for processing signals from multiple LEO satellites

→ Activity 127 - Cross-domain nonlinear state estimation for autonomous systems using unscented Kalman filtering (€500k) - positioning software for autonomous vehicles and drones

→ Activity 122 - Acoustic arrays for drone localisation and identification (€600k) - using sound to detect and track drones

ITTs via esa-STAR. Ireland is an eligible participating state.

ESA Phi-Lab Ireland - Second call expected later in 2026

ESA Phi-Lab Ireland has indicated a second call for proposals will open later this year, targeting both space-active and space-curious Irish companies. No date confirmed yet. Watch this space.

Celtonn co-founder Aoife Kelly has completed a stint as a mentor on the STEM Passport for Inclusion Programme, which supports secondary school students from disadvantaged backgrounds towards a STEM university qualification. Run through Maynooth University, the programme asks mentors for around 12 hours of their time across training and student support. Kelly said the experience of sharing industry insights and helping students develop technical skills had been "incredibly rewarding."

PICTURE: Still waiting. Isar Aerospace’s Spectrum rocket on the pad at Andoya Space Port in Norway.

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

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