Smallsat maker Aerospacelab snaps up spacecraft optics specialist

TAMPA, Fla. — Six-year-old European small satellite tv for pc maker Aerospacelab has purchased AMOS, a Belgian firm that has supplied optics for spacecraft and ground-based telescopes for greater than 4 many years.

The businesses didn’t disclose monetary particulars of their April 15 announcement, however Aerospacelab chief technique officer Tina Ghataore stated the deal expands its workforce from round 200 to 330 individuals, primarily throughout Belgium, France and Switzerland.

The acquisition comes two years after Aerospacelab raised round $46 million from enterprise capitalists to construct out a vertically built-in satellite tv for pc manufacturing and working enterprise. 

Ghataore stated AMOS — or Superior Mechanical and Optical Methods — provides crucial capabilities throughout house and floor techniques.

Area initiatives AMOS has labored on embrace sharpening mirrors for ESA’s darkish matter looking house observatory Euclid and offering multispectral devices for the company’s Sentinel Earth statement satellite tv for pc program.

AMOS can also be offering experience and {hardware} for the European Southern Observatory’s Extraordinarily Massive Telescope (ETL), which might measure 39 meters throughout when accomplished towards the tip of the last decade.

Ghataore joined Aerospacelab in August as chief technique and income officer and CEO of the corporate’s just lately opened U.S. department. She was beforehand chief industrial officer for the U.S. division of Germany-based Mynaric, which gives optical applied sciences for communications.

AMOS’ “experience in massive very refined telescopes for astronomy and different science missions additionally positions Aerospacelab to deal with space-to-ground optical communications markets,” Ghataore stated, “which is able to turn out to be crucial as we see the deployment of house optical communication terminals. 

“The deep capabilities in precision bigger mirrors for telescopes that AMOS brings is vital to this.”

Increasing capabilities

Being vertically built-in throughout key bus platform avionics permits Aerospacelab to “management our growth timelines, innovate, and go by worth to our finish buyer,” Ghataore stated by way of e mail.

The most important satellites Aerospacelab has deployed thus far are within the 150-kilogram class and able to one kilowatt of peak energy, though the corporate has plans for extra highly effective spacecraft as massive as 700 kilograms.

In keeping with Ghataore, satellites deployed thus far have been a mixture of Aerospacelab expertise demos and distant sensing buyer payloads for the European Area Company and Swiss Ministry of Protection.

In March, Aerospacelab secured a contract to construct its first positioning, navigation and timing satellite tv for pc in a deal for Xona Area, a Californian startup in search of to supply a industrial different to GPS.

Xona is offering the payload for this satellite tv for pc in time for a 2025 launch, which Ghataore stated would even be Aerospacelab’s first payload in orbit for a industrial buyer.

Aerospacelab will construct the satellite tv for pc platform in a U.S.-based manufacturing unit that the corporate goals to deliver on-line within the subsequent six to 9 months, she added, though the precise location has not been introduced.

Increasing manufacturing

Aerospacelab’s different U.S. buyer is Albedo, a remote-sensing startup planning to determine an optical and thermal imaging constellation in very-low Earth orbit.

Ghataore stated Aerospacelab is “delivering a full suite of avionics subsystems to them, however they’ll decide [the] launch timeline.”

Aerospacelab’s present manufacturing facility in Ottignies-Louvain-La-Neuve, Belgium, is designed to provide as many as 24 satellites per 12 months. 

Nevertheless, Aerospacelab plans to open up a second Belgian facility subsequent 12 months roughly 40 kilometers away that may be massive sufficient to provide 500 satellites yearly.

Along with the AMOS acquisition, Ghataore stated this “megafactory” manufacturing unit would place Aerospacelab as one of many largest satellite tv for pc producers in Europe.

Aerospacelab buyers embrace the enterprise capital arm of European house large Airbus, which co-led its Collection B funding spherical in 2022.

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