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Welcome to SpaceTech Ireland - your fast, Irish-first read on the space economy.
This Week’s Signal: Ireland’s ESA win-rate keeps rising (+ €24M in 2024, + 116 companies now active in the ecosystem). A sector-by-sector breakdown of where the money went - mainly to downstream climate and agriculture applications - and what it says about ESA strategy 2025-27. Europe’s investment bank launches its first €1.4Bn space lending facility, and Ubotica wins a prestigious award with NASA for autonomous satellite technology.
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December 5, 2025
Executive Brief:
• ESA contracts favour climate applications – Follow the money: Earth observation for agriculture, renewables and carbon measurement took most of Ireland’s €24M ESA funding in 2024.
• Debt financing now available – EIB's €1.4 Bn facility offers non-dilutive capital to ESA contractors and downstream developers through major European banks.
• Ubotica wins international recognition – SpaceNews Icon Award for satellite autonomy technology shared with NASA JPL validates Irish space AI capability
• Scout missions lowering barriers to entry – ESA's €35m, three-year rapid missions create accessible opportunities for Irish satellite firms
For Founders
€24M ESA Contract Breakdown - And What it Means
Irish companies secured €24 million in ESA contracts during 2024 - a 2.4x jump from €9.9 million in 2023. Here's the sector breakdown and what it signals about ESA's funding priorities for the next 24 months.
Where the €24M went:
Earth Observation – The majority of contracts clustered in climate action, renewable energy, agriculture, and disaster response applications.
Key winners included Ubotica (CogniSAT-6 commercial satellite), Proveye (€900k for grassland carbon measurement), TechWorks Marine (€475k for wind sector satellite data), and smaller projects from Compass Informatics, CarbonSpace, and Treemetrics.
The pattern: ESA is funding downstream, data-driven applications more heavily than raw EO infrastructure.
Satellite Communications – ÉireComposites, ATG Innovation, Celtonn, Eblana Photonics, and others landed contracts for optical inter-satellite comms, ground station systems, and payload components.
These are capital-intensive, long-sales-cycle contracts (12-24 months to signature). Companies which don’t already have ESA or aerospace relationships should focus on GSTP pathfinding projects first rather than jumping to ARTES production contracts.
Navigation – Only Réaltra (Ariane 6 flight systems, ~€1M), Timing Solutions, Provizio, and a handful of others. Navigation contracting is highly consolidated and dependent on launcher/platform relationships. Extreme resilience and miniaturisation are the differentiators in this space.
Space infrastructure – Nammo Ireland (Ariane 6 propulsion), Lios (acoustic materials), Enovus Labs (thermal management for lunar), and Aquila Bioscience (decontamination).
These are next-generation contracts, heavily weighted toward launcher reusability and deep-space missions. For companies with heritage aerospace or materials expertise, this is where first-mover advantage still exists.
What This Tells You About ESA's Strategy (2025–2027):
Climate action and renewable energy applications drive funding – ESA is funding EO only when it solves a climate, agriculture, or disaster problem. Pitches including carbon measurement, yield optimisation, or wind/flood forecasting will bypass a lot of traditional ESA evaluation friction.
Downstream/Upstream partnerships – Proveye's €900k win came because they partnered with an ESA-designated Earth Observation body. Ubotica's CogniSAT-6 succeeded because they brought commercial backing. Standalone small-cap founders without data partnerships or commercial validation will struggle.
GSTP is the onramp, ARTES/NAVISP are for the scaled – Of the 116 Irish space-active companies in ESA's ecosystem, most still operate at the €100-500k project level (GSTP). A GSTP project is the first milestone before pursuing €1M+ ARTES or NAVISP contracts.
Aerospace credentials still matter for infrastructure; software/data doesn't – You don't need an aerospace pedigree to land a €500k EO or software contract. You do need it for propulsion, materials, or flight systems.
A SpaceX Falcon 9 lifts off from Vandenberg, California
Ubotica Wins SpaceNews Icon Award
Dublin-based Ubotica Technologies won the 2025 SpaceNews Icon Award for Space AI Breakthrough on 2 December, sharing the honour with NASA JPL and Open Cosmos for their Dynamic Targeting technology.
The system lets satellites make autonomous decisions in orbit, identifying cloud cover and redirecting sensors to capture useful images without waiting for ground control.
Ubotica co-founder Aubrey Dunne said the award capped years of work developing autonomous systems that let satellites effectively see, think and act on their own.
The technology was demonstrated on Open Cosmos' CogniSat-6 satellite this summer, where it successfully avoided cloud-obscured areas and maximised useful data collection.
For an Irish company to win alongside NASA represents a significant validation of Ireland's space AI capabilities.
EIB opens €1.4Bn Lending Facility
Why It Matters for Irish Founders
For the first time, Irish space SMEs can access bank financing without selling equity. The European Investment Bank’s new €1.4Bn facility removes a 20-year funding bottleneck.
The EIB announced its first dedicated space lending facility at ESA's Ministerial Council last week, tackling a problem that's plagued European space firms for over two decades: getting a bank loan.
The initiative aims to mobilise €1.4 billion through commercial banks, addressing what makes space companies difficult to lend to - long development timelines, intangible assets, and revenue that arrives in lumps rather than steady streams. ESA will help by providing technical assessments and sector expertise to banks including Intesa Sanpaolo, Natixis, and Deutsche Bank.
For Irish founders, this could be significant. Space SMEs have typically relied on grants and equity, often giving away ownership earlier than they'd like. The EIB facility offers another option: debt financing that lets you grow without dilution.
ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher called it "a decisive milestone for Europe's space industry".
It complements existing supports like CASSINI and should be accessible to Irish companies working with ESA or developing downstream applications.
Hot on SpaceX’s heels: China’s Zhuque-3 reusable rocket heads to orbit
ATG Wins Contract for ESA's LISA Mission
ATG has signed a contract with OHB to deliver the central structural tube for all three satellites in ESA's LISA mission, leading an Irish consortium with ÉireComposites.
LISA will use three spacecraft flying 2.5 million kilometres apart to detect gravitational waves from cosmic events like black hole mergers.
ATG will design the central tube (the chassis of the satellite) based on its patented lightweight, high-stiffness, grid-stiffened structural composite architecture, while ÉireComposites will manufacture and assemble the structure.
LISA is one of ESA’s Cosmic Vision flagships. The contract places Irish firms at the centre of one of the organisation’s most ambitious deep-space missions.
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🧑🏻🚀MoonShorts🧑🚀
🚀 A German astronaut will be the first European to fly to the Moon, European Space Agency chief Josef Aschbacher told the ESA ministerial council last week. Germany is the biggest contributor to the ESA budget.
🚀 German startup Isar Aerospace has won an ESA contract to launch a technology demonstration satellite in late 2026. The mission will carry 10 payloads from five European countries, launching from Andoya Spaceport in Norway. Isar's inaugural Spectrum rocket flight crashed seconds after liftoff in March.
🚀 Russian cosmonaut Oleg Artemyev has been pulled from SpaceX's Crew-12 mission to the ISS after allegedly photographing restricted materials during training in California. Russian outlet The Insider said Artemyev violated US export regulations by photographing engines and technical documentation on his phone.
Upcoming launches:
Dec 6: CASC unknown payload – Long March 8A, Wenchang, China
Dec 7: Rocket Lab RAISE-4 tech demo satellite – Electron, Mahia, NZ
Dec 7: SpaceX Starlink Group 11-15 – Falcon 9, Vandenberg
Dec 7: SpaceX Starlink Group 6-92 – Falcon 9, Kennedy Space Center
Dec 9: SpaceX NROL-77 national security mission – Falcon 9, Cape Canaveral
QUOTES OF THE WEEK
“This is not the time for delay, but for action, because if we fall behind, if we make a mistake, we may never catch up, and the consequences could shift the balance of power here on Earth.” - NASA hopeful Jared Isaacson at his confirmation hearing before a US Senate committee.
“Space impacts so much of our daily life, often without us realising.” - Alan Dillon, Irish Minister of State for Employment, Small Business and Retail, on Ireland’s new ESA commitments.
“Today it’s a robotic arm demonstration, but one day these same technologies could be assembling solar arrays, refueling satellites.”- Bo Naasz, senior technical lead for In-space Servicing, Assembly, and Manufacturing at NASA.
“As low-orbit constellation deployment accelerates, Zhuque-3 will continue to ... progress from recovery demonstrations to routine reuse” - China’s LandSpace on its first Zhuque-3 reusable-rocket landing attempt.
An Arianespace Vega-C rocket blasts off from Kourou, French Guiana, carrying South Korea’s KOMPSAT-7 satellite
Until Next Week….
SpaceTech Ireland is the only newsletter focusing exclusively on Ireland's space sector opportunities.
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