The start-up has just opened a factory producing small satellites weighing from 10 to 150 kg for New Space constellations. It plans to move into series production in 2026.
France’s “New Space” players are getting busy. U-Space inaugurated France’s first of nano and microsatellites weighing from 10 to 150 kg, on Wednesday November 27 in Toulouse.
The start-up has leased 1,000 m2 of space beneath its offices in the B612 aerospace innovation building, home to the Aerospace Valley competitiveness cluster. For the time being, this is a workshop where two nanosatellites will be hand-assembled this year, and four more this year.
U-Space inaugurates France’s first nanosatellite factory | Les Echos in 2025. The company will go on to mass-produce 12 spaceships in 2026, and hopes to build one a week by 2028!
“We’ll set up islands dedicated to the various manufacturing sequences to form an adaptable and transportable factory, should we need to move manufacturing to a defense-secured site,” explains Cyril Brotons, U-Space’s industrial director, who was poached from Airbus Defence & Space, where he was involved in the mass production of the OneWeb constellation.
The start-up designs the satellites, has the parts manufactured, assembles them and integrates the payload. To reduce space costs, U-Space will e ect tests on pre-series parts to validate that the process is repeatable, without having to test the whole satellite. “This will enable us to automate certain elements,” explains Cyril Brotons. These small production spaceships are sold for between 1 and 5 million euros, compared with 150 million for a traditional large satellite.
Space surveillance
U-Space was founded in 2018 by Fabien Apper, a recent graduate of ISAE-Supero, with Antoine Ressouche (ENAC) and a third partner who has left the company. After leading a student project, they won a CNES contract to manufacture the 5kg Ness nanosatellite that detects positioning signal jammers, launched in October 2023. This technological showcase has enabled U-Space to win nine contracts for nanosatellite precursors to low-Earth orbit constellations.
Minisatellites: the New Space industry booms in Toulouse
As part of the France 2030 program, the company is building the 20 kg Soap satellite for CNES, which will monitor space debris. It is also building Pandore, a nanosatellite demonstrator that will improve the accuracy of GPS/Galileo signals for autonomous vehicles, for a consortium comprising Safran Syrlinks, Comat, Microtec and Anywaves. Both will be launched in March 2025.
In the defense sector, U-Space won the Toutatis space surveillance program program: a 25 kg satellite will detect threats from spy satellites, and a second and the second 120 kg satellite will be used for defense maneuvers…
The German space agency DLR has ordered a demonstrator. In the private New Space market, Rennes-based Unseenlabs has ordered the first spacecraft in a constellation to monitor ships, while Lille-based start-up Grasp Earth has ordered the first of a ten-satellite constellation to detect aerosols on Earth.
Becoming Europe’s leading nanosatellite manufacturer
We’ve been awarded contracts to manufacture the first satellite as a proof of concept,” explains Fabien Apper. If it works, the customer will order a constellation of 10 to 200 small satellites. We plan to manufacture around a hundred spaceships within five years. The CEO is counting on the launch of around a hundred New Space constellation projects over the next few years. He aims to become a leading European nanosatellite manufacturer in the face of Lithuania’s Nanoavionics, Denmark’s GomSpace and Toulouse-based Hemeria.
The company employs 72 people and should have around 100 employees by 2026, but is not disclosing its sales figures. In order to expand, the company hopes to a new financing round of over 15 million euros in March 2025, after having raised 7 million in 2022