14 Exciting SpaceTech Startups To Look Out For In 2024

The UK government has announced a £15 million fund, as a an effort to invest in science and tech projects, together with Axiom Space. The mission will be sending 4 British astronauts to space. There are possibilities that they will be sent to the International Space Station.

Andrew Griffith MP, Minister for Space, encapsulated the enthusiasm for this venture, stating, “There is huge potential for UK businesses to play an increasingly important role in space exploration and the development of new technologies.”

Many startups in the UK and around the world are also on their own missions to innovate and grow the SpaceTech industry, by creating more accessible solutions. Here are 13 interesting SpaceTech startups to look out for:

1. Hydrosat

 

 

 

 

Hydrosat, the Luxembourg-based climate tech startup specialising in delivering satellite imagery and data analytics, recently closed out a transformative year.

From its $1.2 million contract with the US Air Force, $22 million in new funding, the acquisition of IrriWatch, and the completion of its first proprietary thermal infrared satellite payload, Hydrosat is delivering on its vision to provide critical insights across a broad range of use cases.

Hydrosat collects, processes, and analyzes infrared satellite data – particularly thermal infrared temperature data – to provide a leading indicator for water stress.

Hydrosat uses this data to provide irrigation and water management solutions to growers to help them farm more efficiently. This capability is a breakthrough in solving for water scarcity and food production.

Hydrosat’s IrriWatch product supports customers in 36 countries across 2.5 million acres of farmland, enabling growers to optimise farming operations, and increase crop yields by as much as 50% while consuming 25% less water.

“As climate change continues to threaten our food supply and global economy, the need for geospatial insights continues to grow,” said Pieter Fossel, CEO and co-founder.

“We’re bullish on our outlook for the future and democratising critical data sets for users around the world.”

 

2. Arkisys, Inc.

 

 

 

 

Arkisys, Inc., located in Los Alamitos, California with locations in Asia and New Zealand. The startup is a provider of advanced spacecraft architectures, structures, and platform solutions.

Arkisys is building the Port Architecture, a robotic commercial space platform that provides multiple capabilities and services for a global customer base.

Arkisys is assembling the first incremental space infrastructure step through an agile aggregatable platform that directly supports customer needs today, with services to expand and create new markets tomorrow.

 

3. Cailabs

 

 

The French-based Cailabs is a global deeptech company that designs and manufactures photonics products with groundbreaking applications in space, defence, and other major industries.

In the field of free space communications and ground-based telecoms, Cailabs’ laser solutions enable faster, more reliable, and safer data transmission. In the industrial sector, they allow for more precise and competitive processes.

Optical technologies are increasingly important in the space industry, whether for laser communications or additive manufacturing, which is used to machine highly specialist parts used in satellites.

Cailabs’ TILBA-OGS optical ground stations are designed to overcome the main technical limitations of standard radio-frequency communications currently used for space communications.

It currently has more than 80 employees, including 22 PhD graduates, and owns 26 patent families. Last year, the company was one of the winners of the first edition of the FrenchTech2030 program.

By combining its mastery of the science of light with outstanding engineering, Cailabs is pushing the boundaries of what’s possible, accelerating progress and paving the way for a brighter future.

 

4. Altitude Angels

 

Altitude Angel is an aviation technology company delivering solutions which unlock the potential of unmanned aircraft to routinely fly in airspace all over the world. Their platform supports done management into a holistic airspace management operating system.

National aviation authorities, Air Navigation Service Provider, developers and enterprise organisations use the platform to enable safe use of automated drones in the global airspace.

Altitude Angel’s missions outlines their commitment to “unlocking and unifying the airspace, to enable more people to access and utilise the potential of Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS)”. Their platform will drive technological upgrading and innovation resulting in high levels of economic productivity.

 

5. All Space

 

 

ALL.SPACE is a global satellite communications company pioneering the development of nexgen technologies. With a vision of delivering ubiquitous connectivity across land, air, and sea, ALL.SPACE creates cutting-edge solutions to address the complex challenges of today’s evolving satellite industry.

Investors in ALL SPACE include Seraphim Space Investment Trust, AEI HorizonX, Promus Ventures through its Luxembourg based space investment fund, Orbital Ventures, SES, Firmament Ventures, UK government’s Future Fund, Space Angels and family office investors such as Waterlow Management Limited and Boka Capital.

 

6. Astroscale

 

 

 

 

Astroscale is a space infrastructure firm that develops technology for space debris removal and on-orbit satellite servicing, which sits at the frontier of positively contributing to SDG 9.

On-orbit satellite servicing allows for satellites to continue their function as critical infrastructure that supports industrialisation and economic development. By using Astroscale’s technology, this can advance business cases and inform international policies that support the long-term, sustainable use of space.

For example, Astroscale aims to Secure Our Orbital Highways through four routes:

End-of-Life: While the rise of large commercial satellites without question improves quality of life on Earth, Astroscale has recognised that those reaching their end of life could end up as space debris.

Active Debris Removal: Astroscale partners with leading international agencies to develop innovative solutions to capture this debris.

Life Extension: Optimising existing space assets is becoming increasingly more important with today’s competition and need to reduce unnecessary impact. Astroscale’s innovative on-orbit satellite servicing bridges this gap allowing for companies to increase flexibility with their current space fleet.

In SituSpace Situational Awareness (SSA): Astroscale analyses and evaluates key data to better understand how to improve their processes and safely remove defunct satellites.
 

 

7. D-Orbit

 

 

D-Orbit is a market leader in the space logistics and transportation services industry with a track record of space-proven services, technologies, and successful missions.

With its multi-purpose ION orbital transfer vehicle, D-Orbit has now already successfully launched revenue generating solutions across in-orbit transportation, payload hosting, space-based edge compute, space situational awareness and in-space communications.

After hitching a ride to Space on large rockets from the likes of SpaceX, each ION then provides a ‘last mile delivery service’ by flying around different orbits delivering its cargo (namely customers’ satellites) to their precise orbital destination, thereby reducing their customers’ time from launching to operating their satellites by up to 85%, and cutting constellation launch costs by 40%.

These same ION spacecraft can also be used to host customers’ payloads to accelerate testing and in-orbital validation of new technology. Once these primary missions have been completed, each ION can then be re-purposed to undertake a range of secondary missions and applications that include space-based edge compute and in-space communications.

D-Orbit also collaborates a range of institutional government and space agency customers such as ASI, (Italian Space Agency), UKSA (the UK Space Agency), ESA (European Space Agency), and the EC (European Commission).

D-Orbit has offices in Italy, Portugal, the UK, and the US; as a benefit corporation, its commitment to pursuing business models that are profitable and beneficial for society, led D-Orbit S.p.A. to become the first certified B-Corp space company in the world.

 

8. Hawk Eye 360

 

 

HawkEye360 build and operate a constellation of small satellites for the purposes of tracking and analysing radio frequency signals. For those dedicated to protecting environmental ecosystems and human life, radio frequency (RF) data can be the difference between tragedy and victory.

Whether its spotting illegal fishing vessels depleting the world’s oceans, pinpointing poachers attacking animals in national parks, or detecting emergency beacons during a crisis situation, HawkEye 360’s technologies can support your mission to preserve and protect.

 

9. Edgybees

 

 

 

 

Edgybees software provides Visual Context in real time in the real world using Geospatial Intelligence for aerial and satellite videos and images.

Satellite images with geographic positioning are coupled with compute vision and machine learning to deliver visually augmented video with the highest levels of precision and speed.

The software can be utilised to provide on-target responses to emergency incidents such as extreme weather events. This clarity, precision, and speed to mission-critical operations strengthens resilience to natural disasters.

 

10. ICEY

 

 

ICEYE uses radar satellites to unlock access to data on any location on Earth in order to monitor natural catastrophes and hazards such as flooding. This information can then be used to make critical and timely decisions in order to respond and mitigate to any potential climate-related hazards and natural disasters.

For example, ICEYE’s products provides several solutions to monitor natural catastrophes, that contribute to SDG 13.
Flood monitoring – ICEYE’s solutions provide accurate data on water-caused damage to insured property during floods, in any location on Earth.

Wildfire monitoring – ICEYE’s persistent monitoring allows for stakeholders to respond to wildfires in innovative ways.
Wind monitoring – ICEYE provides access to situational awareness and near real-time damage data related to storms that occur across the globe.

Earthquake monitoring – Through their persistent monitoring approach, ICEYE can capture valuable data and actionable insights before, during, and after an earthquake.

 

11. LeoLabs

 

 

 

LeoLabs technology develops a network of radars that produces high-resolution on objects in low Earth orbit (LEO) – which provides information on vital space infrastructure.

This provides industries that rely on satellite services and infrastructure with support they need to keep their services up and running.

This contributes to Target 9.1 as LeoLabs develops regional and transborder infrastructure from different radars in the U.S (one in Texas and one in Alaska), Costa Rica as well as in New Zealand. Some of the markets that LeoLabs supports are:

Satellite Operations – LeoLabs help support different stakeholders satellite operations e.g. start ups and universities & research labs

Regulators – LeoLabs provides regulators with specific data on their satellite infrastructure such as risk of space debris and/or collision risk information.

Insurance – LeoLabs provides annual risk reports for companies to help understand insurance risks from potential collisions. In addition, they provide reports on changes in the risk environment caused by new launches, breakups, and satellite failures.

 

12. Skylo

 

 

Skylo Technologies is a global NTN service provider based in Mountain View, CA, offering a service that allows smartphone and IoT cellular devices to connect directly over existing satellites. Devices connected over satellite are managed and served by Skylo’s commercial NTN vRAN, featuring a 3GPP standards-based cloud-native base station and core.

Skylo works with existing satellite operators, network operators, and device makers to provide subscribers an anywhere, anytime connectivity solution that seamlessly roams between terrestrial and satellite networks.

Skylo’s focus is on enabling connected services for people outdoors and connected workflows for machines at work across critical industries such as agriculture, maritime, logistics, mining, and others, in addition to mass-market consumer devices.

 

13. Xona Space Systems

 

 

Xona Pulsar is a commercial satellite navigation service powered by a constellation of small satellites in LEO designed specifically to provide high-performance Positioning, Navigation and Timing (PNT) to end users.

As a key validation of its technology last year, it announced it was partnering with the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) and the U.S. Space Force to work toward a secure LEO PNT architecture leveraging Xona’s Pulsar service.

The company is backed by Lockheed Martin, which also announced a collaboration to jointly work to protect Xona’s Pulsar services in accordance with military-grade security practices.Xona believes that its small satellite technology will be able to provide users with a secure and robust alternative to GNSS from satellites 25 times closer to Earth.

It believes its Pulsar service can provide an affordable global service with more than 10 times better accuracy than GNSS. It is looking to target a variety of markets with its high-performance satellite navigation services, like maritime, agriculture, IoT, weather, critical infrastructure, and aerial mobility.

Xona Space Systems has been one of the early players in the area of commercial GNSS alternatives and it will be interesting to see how it affects the satellite navigation market.
 

OrbiSky

 

 
OrbiSky Systems, based in London and a proud participant in the NCSC For Startups programme, is at the forefront of revolutionising the aerospace sector with its new-gen edge AI technology.

Our mission is to empower aerospace, defense, and critical infrastructure industries with AI-driven solutions that enhance operational efficiency and cybersecurity.

By developing an innovative edge data unit, OrbiSky is setting new standards in secure data management technology, enabling real-time insights and decision-making in the most remote and challenging environments.

Our cutting-edge AI/ML facilitates the processing and management of complex, real-time, event-driven data directly on devices. This breakthrough capability is particularly crucial for applications requiring operational autonomy in areas lacking reliable cloud connectivity.

By integrating advanced algorithms for computer vision, cybersecurity, and data analytics, our technology offers exceptional processing speed, efficiency, and security for managing intricate data streams at the edge.

OrbiSky’s solution is designed to transform the operational capabilities of robots, vision systems, and other intelligent devices used by our clients.

Unlike existing technologies, which often struggle with the demands of edge computing, our system ensures faster decisions and operational efficiency with minimal power consumption, making it ideal for extended missions in remote locations.

This unique value proposition makes OrbiSky an attractive opportunity for investors keen on supporting a company that’s not just changing the game in aerospace but is also shaping the future of how we interact with and manage the intelligent machines of tomorrow.