On Tuesday morning, December 17, at 06:01 CET, ESA's Ariane 6 rocket thundered skyward from French Guiana carrying two Galileo navigation satellites - and critical flight systems engineered and manufactured in Dublin.

Réaltra Space Systems' video telemetry hardware provided the live HD broadcast during the five-hour, 55-minute ascent, capturing the moment the satellites deployed at 22,922 km altitude.

This was Ariane 6's fifth successful flight. More strategically: it was the first time Galileo satellites flew on Europe's new-generation launcher - a watershed moment for European supply-chain autonomy after years of dependency on Russian Soyuz and American SpaceX.

Réaltra's telemetry systems are high-visibility infrastructure on Europe's flagship launcher, mission-critical systems that broadcast every Ariane 6 flight to mission control.

This contract builds on Réaltra's existing €1.5M commitment for seven telemetry systems across multiple Ariane 6 flights, positioning them as the embedded Irish systems provider for one of Europe's most politically and economically important space programmes.

Europe is heading towards supply-chain independence after years of reliance on Soyuz and SpaceX to get the Galileo constellation into space. This is an important development for Irish space firms as the ESA’s launches will increasingly prioritise European suppliers.

Ireland's space sector is growing fast. With 116 active companies, over 1,000 employees, and €24 million in ESA contracts in 2024, the industry is positioned to capture a meaningful share of the projected $1.8 trillion global space economy by 2035.

But this week's release of "Beyond the Horizon: Building Ireland's Space Workforce" - commissioned by the Department of Further and Higher Education, Research, Innovation and Science (DFHERIS) - reveals a constraint that could throttle that growth: Irish space companies are struggling to recruit and retain the people they need.

Two-thirds of Irish space companies recruited in the past year. Most hired 1-5 people. However, 68% reported severe difficulty recruiting mid-career talent (people with 5-8 years of experience), and 54% struggled filling senior roles.

As a result, two-thirds of companies reported project delays and staff overload. Between 30 and 40% experienced reduced productivity or lost business outright.

The shortage is concentrated in specific roles:

Companies can find entry-level talent. The real bottleneck is mid-career expertise.

Talented engineers exist in Ireland. The problem is they're also wanted, aggressively, by semiconductor companies, medtech firms, fintech, and large technology firms offering higher salaries and more established career paths.

Photonics engineers, AI specialists, and systems experts face particularly intense poaching. Space companies are competing for the same talent pool, and they're often losing.

The report provides a few takeaways for space-tech companies.

Look beyond the space sector. Ireland has deep capabilities in agritech, climate-tech, life sciences, and data analytics. Engineers who've worked in these sectors bring transferable skills, like systems thinking, regulatory navigation and project management, that translate directly to space work. Rather than fighting for the small pool of existing space veterans, it's worth actively recruiting people with adjacent expertise and supporting their transition.

Invest in upskilling existing hires. It's often faster to hire someone who's 80% of the fit and bring them up to speed in space-specific regulations and systems engineering than to wait for the perfect candidate.

Deepen partnerships with universities, not just for recruiting. The launch event, hosted at University College Dublin, emphasized that companies should stop treating universities as recruitment grounds and start treating them as partners for curriculum design and R&D collaboration. Space Industry Skillnet programmes allow companies to shape what graduates learn in the next 12-24 months.

Space companies probably can't buy their way out of this by paying more for mid-career talent. According to the report, there simply isn't enough supply. Instead, successful companies will likely:

This is a sector-wide problem, not a company problem. That suggests an opportunity for training providers, university partnerships, and coordinated sector-wide initiatives to step in.

"Beyond the Horizon: Building Ireland's Space Workforce" was commissioned by the Regional Skills initiative of DFHERIS in partnership with the Irish Space Association and Space Industry Skillnet. The full report is available through these organisations.

More on Irish space sector talent dynamics next week.

Mbryonics | Galway

InnaLabs | Dublin

Skytek | Dublin

European Space Agency (ESA)

Editor's Note on Links: Some companies use a single "Job Listings" page rather than unique URLs for each role. For ESA, if a direct link expires, the Job Req ID provided helps readers find the specific role on their main portal.