To produce nanosatellites quickly and efficiently, U-Space has inaugurated its manufacturing plant in Toulouse and plans to raise over 15 million euros.
Two hundred people were invited on Wednesday November 27 to the inauguration of U-Zine, the 1,000 m² nanosatellite manufacturing plant located at the heart of B612, the Toulouse Aerospace innovation center that also houses Aerospace Valley. Customers, partners and suppliers of U-Space, a company founded in 2018 by Fabien Apper, Nicolas Jumeau and Antoine Ressouche, were able to watch two technicians busy, in one of the two clean rooms, assembling the observation nanosatellite ordered by Cnes, a small CubSat called Soap. In the second clean room, another small technology demonstration satellite, Pandore, was undergoing a series of tests. On board, it will carry components developed by other companies such as Comat, Microtec, Anywaves and Syrlinks. Both vehicles will be delivered in December and launched into orbit next March by SpaceX rocket.
In all, the company, which designs low-orbit nanosatellites weighing from 20 to 150 kilos and integrates customer-supplied payloads, has won nine contracts for precursor satellites, notably for Nantes-based operator Unseelabs, the French defense procurement agency DGA (Direction Générale de l’Armement) on behalf of the French Space Command, and DLR, the German space agency. However, U-Space is preparing to step up the pace and gradually enter the industrial phase. The company, which caters for the public and private space markets, produces two satellites every six months, and plans to produce four over the same period, in 2025. The following year, it expects to produce one satellite per month, then one per week by 2027/2028. “Our factory is designed to produce one satellite a day, to keep pace with the market,” explains Cyril Brotons, U-Space’s industrial director.
Second round of financing underway
U-Space’s strengths in a competitive sector? “We take our inspiration from the aeronautics industry,” continues Cyril Brotons, former project manager at One Web. “We rely on the Toulouse ecosystem, and we carry out pre-production tests on a small family of fifty satellites to validate our processes, which we can then reproduce. As a result, our assemblies will be more robust and will be manufactured in shorter lead-times.” With seventy-two employees, U-Space, which already raised 7 million euros in the summer of 2022 (Bpifrance, Carat capital…) and obtained 9 million euros in subsidies (Region, France 2023…), is planning a second round of over 15 million euros.