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

This week: Liam Moran, a UCD space science graduate from Co Clare, on how he landed an internship at the European Southern Observatory after some 30 applications went largely unanswered, his work aligning the mirror of the 39-metre telescope ESO is building in Chile, and why the cost of living makes coming home hard. ESA’s Hera spacecraft, carrying a Dublin-built gyroscope, has seen its two target asteroids as separate objects for the first time. A movable European rocket engine test stand with Cork’s SUAS Aerospace among its partners has passed its final checks. Plus Seraphim’s new $150,000 investments in early-stage start-ups, an ESA funding call drawn up with Europe’s grid operators, a free ESA course for non-engineers, and jobs at Manna, Mbryonics, ESA and EUMETSAT.

Liam Moran applied for about 30 internships during his master's year at University College Dublin and heard back from five. Then he tried the European Southern Observatory (ESO), which interviewed him and offered him a place within the month.

Since July the 24-year-old from Co Clare has worked in ESO's optical engineering department in Garching, near Munich, on the Extremely Large Telescope (ELT), the 39-metre telescope under construction in Chile's Atacama Desert. Its main mirror is made of hundreds of hexagonal segments that must line up to within nanometres.

"Before I even applied to the ESO one, I'd applied to about 30, all over. Some in Ireland, some in Europe," he told SpaceTech Ireland. "I got about five replies, about 25 just stone cold, nothing back."

The ESO process began in February, and he had accepted the offer by the end of that month. "That was very speedy compared to whatever else people go through."

He puts the offer down to his optics background and to research on ESO. The University of Galway, where he studied physics, is one of three partners building MORFEO, an adaptive optics system for the ELT. Before applying he contacted people who had worked at ESO.

"I did a bit of research into ESO. There was that kind of connection there. And they knew that I'd contacted people already who'd worked at ESO."

Galway to Dublin: After his degree, he took a year out, “just to really figure out what I wanted to do and save my money as well." In that year he found the MSc in Space Science and Technology at UCD. "I applied for that and thankfully I got it, and then I realised how many different pathways there are and how big the industry even in Ireland is."

He came to astronomy late. "I was more interested in CERN and stuff like that. I always thought I'd go down the nuclear and particle path," he said. ESO kept coming up in his astronomy modules. "It was kind of more interesting when I really looked into it."

The Work: The ELT's segments must be held "in phase", in a precise shape, for the telescope to give a sharp image. The Zernike sensor he works with shifts part of the focused light by half a wavelength, so that errors in the mirror's shape show up as changes in brightness. "You can directly image where each segment is popped out and by how much," Moran said.

He simulates random errors in the segments, many times over, to build an interaction matrix: a record of how the sensor responds to each misalignment, which a control system uses to work out corrections. The sensor is due to be tested on GHOST, a GPU-driven adaptive optics testbench at ESO. His internship ends on 30 November.

What comes next: "I'm already asking around here. I'd love to stay on. Asking if there's PhD positions or even any studentship programmes or anything like that. It would be really interesting to stay on here."

He had also been accepted by DLR, the German Aerospace Center, for work on satellite timing systems, but turned it down for ESO. At home, his first choice would be Mbryonics, the Galway optical communications company. "It's close to home. And I know they have good optics set up there. I know a few people from the master's as well that got jobs there. And they enjoy it."

The Cost of Coming Home: Orlaith Doyle, a fellow UCD graduate who spent the summer on an ESA internship, told SpaceTech Ireland in September she could find no jobs in Ireland for her skillset, and would come home only to a role where she could keep growing. Moran points to the cost of living.

"I was warned before coming to Munich that it's very expensive. And after living in Dublin for the year, coming here, it's different," he said.

"So many other people are leaving as well, so there's not much to stick around for unless it's family, and a lot of my friends have already moved abroad. It is just cost, even things like groceries, food."

"I know the wages are getting better now for jobs, especially in this industry," he said, but the options are not hugely encouraging.

"Even going back home now and waiting around there to find a job, getting accepted, you'd live at the parents' house then for a while."

His advice: Students now contact him about the course and the work. He replies to all of them.

"I'd say don't be afraid to reach out. It only took me 30 seconds to reply, and it made no difference to me, but to them it gave them better insight.

“I was always terrified of doing that when I was going through college. I was thinking, oh, it'll be annoying. It doesn't take too long or too much effort to reply."

Nearly 200 million kilometres from Earth, a European spacecraft carrying a gyroscope built in Dublin has taken its first images showing two asteroids, Didymos and its small moon Dimorphos, as two separate objects.

The images, released by the European Space Agency on Tuesday, mark another step towards a close-up investigation by ESA’s Hera spacecraft of Dimorphos.

In 2022 NASA’s DART probe deliberately crashed into Dimorphos and shortened its orbit by about 33 minutes, the first test of whether an asteroid could be nudged off course to protect Earth.

Hera, Europe’s first planetary defence mission, will study the aftermath up close, including what the impact did to the asteroid’s surface and whether it left a crater. The first detailed images of Dimorphos are expected on 25 November.

InnaLabs built Hera’s gyroscope unit, which measures how the spacecraft rotates. It was designed to be the first sensor in use after launch, tracking how the probe tumbled away from its rocket so it could turn its solar panels to the Sun. Around the asteroids it provides backup when sun glare or dust affects the main star-tracking camera.

InnaLabs has since won a contract to supply the same gyroscope for Ramses, ESA’s next planetary defence mission, which will visit the asteroid Apophis.

Readers can follow the approach on ESA’s Hera Space Companion, and younger readers can watch ESA’s animated explainer, The Missing Puzzle Piece.

A European rocket engine test stand that can be packed up and moved has passed its final checks, with Cork-based SUAS Aerospace among the partners behind it. The sign-off at OHB Digital Connect’s site in Mainz, Germany, in front of officials from the European Commission, ESA and the French and German space agencies, marks the end of Eu-BEST (European Bench for Engine and Stage Testing). The €4.96 million Horizon Europe research project has run since November 2023.

The stand is modular, so it can be taken apart, moved and rebuilt at different sites. The aim is to give European launcher companies cheaper, standardised testing without each one building a fixed stand of its own. It can handle engines burning liquid oxygen and methane with up to 500 kilonewtons of thrust, a force equal to the weight of about 50 tonnes. OHB also built a system that measures how hard and in which direction an engine pushes, in real time, which it says will speed up testing. The partners hope to run about 200 tests a year at around €25,000 each, not counting fuel.

The partners say the rig was assembled, connected and taken apart again within a few days, and passed interface tests that included a simulated firing. No engine firing has been reported, and no permanent site or operator has been named. A first firing was originally planned at Lleida-Alguaire in Catalonia with Pangea Aerospace’s ARCOS engine, but the completion announcement does not mention it.

SUAS was named in 2023 as the project’s secondary test location, to show the stand would work with the rocket engine test site it plans in Ireland. The outcome gives it an accepted, movable design to build on.

“Flexible, modular testing infrastructure is an important step in supporting Europe’s launch ambitions, and closely aligned with the rocket engine testing infrastructure we are developing in Ireland,” said David Rudge, its head of commercial development.

SUAS is based at the National Space Centre’s Elfordstown site near Midleton, and Rory Fitzpatrick is chief executive of both.

He told SpaceTech Ireland in May that SUAS was raising €10 million to fund its first launches, had an option to buy land at two Atlantic-facing sites and held letters of intent from seven European rocket companies. He would not name the sites, and SUAS has still not named a location for its engine test site.

🚀 ESA Education has launched Space for Everyone, a free online course for anyone curious about how the space sector works, with no science or engineering background needed. Its nine modules include astronomy, space engineering, space law and society, space business, life sciences and the role of space in everyday life, plus one on why we explore space at all. Learners choose the modules they want and work at their own pace. Each takes between about 20 and 75 minutes, around six hours in all, and there is a certificate at the end. ESA is pitching it at people weighing future studies, people already in work and the simply curious.
→ Space for Everyone: details · Enrol on ESA Learn

Seraphim offers $150,000 to early-stage space start-ups

London space investor Seraphim has just launched the Seraphim Academy, investing $150,000 in each selected pre-seed or seed-stage space company, paid in two stages, with up to 12 months of support. The core programme runs four to six months and covers fundraising, sales and mentoring, with a focus on space and defence markets. Applications are assessed as they arrive, with no fixed intake, and Seraphim aims to take up to 15 companies a year.

Seraphim Academy

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ESA opens grid-resilience funding call on Monday

ESA will open a funding call on Monday 2 November for services that use satellite data to help electricity grid operators anticipate and respond to threats to their networks. The call was drawn up with ENTSO-E, which represents Europe’s transmission system operators, the companies such as EirGrid that run high-voltage power networks.

Deadline: 29 January 2027

ESA: Space-Enabled Solutions for Resilient Grids

Arctic navigation call closes next week

ESA’s call for satellite services that make Arctic shipping safer closes on Thursday 5 November. It covers ice monitoring, route planning, search and rescue, and keeping track of vessels and activity in the region, where melting ice is opening new routes and increasing traffic. ESA will co-fund 50–80% of the cost of proof-of-concept studies and pilot projects, without taking equity, depending on company size and national approval. Applicants are advised to contact their national ESA delegation, which in Ireland is Enterprise Ireland, before applying.

Deadline: 5 November 2026

ESA: The Arctic Region – Safety, Navigation and Operations

PICTURE: The International Space Station is due to retire around 2030, and the 420-tonne station can’t simply be abandoned in orbit, because the thin upper atmosphere slowly drags it down and it would eventually fall to Earth uncontrolled. NASA has hired SpaceX, under a contract worth up to $843 million, to build a modified Dragon spacecraft that will dock with the station about 18 months before the end and then fire its engines to steer whatever survives re-entry into a remote stretch of the South Pacific. NASA will decide in 2027 whether to launch it in 2029 or keep the station flying longer.

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

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