D-Orbit, the Italian space startups and benefit corporation, announces a new funding round of 1.83 million euros. This new capital adds to the recent funding of 1.2 million euro loan granted by Unicredit thanks to the central public fund of guarantee for innovative startups. The company, which has its headquarters at ComoNExT, now has resources for more than three million Euros that will be used to further develop the system of decommissioning, the device that allows to remove satellites from the space at the end of their useful life and bring them back to the ground, thus ensuring a significant reduction in cost for the satellite operators, increased profitability of their satellites and increased usability of satellite services worldwide. It is a market where the turnover amounts to approximately EUR 200 billion a year and where D-Orbit intends to play a leading role. Moreover, the primary mission of D-Orbit is the clean and safe access to space, stopping the systematic increase of concentration of uncontrolled objects in space, promoting a sustainable and profitable future for the Space industry, and a clean and safe environment for space missions. D-Orbit is a certified B-Corporation since 2014, that means that the company believe every business should have a positive impact on people, on our society and on other businesses. Profitability for a B-Corp goes together with strategic sustainability.
A D-Sat device prototype
The D-Orbit technology is essentially the D3, a dedicated decommissioning device. Installed on the satellite before launch, D3 allows for a safe, quick, and controlled decommissioning of the spacecraft. With a mass making up only a fraction of the entire satellite, D3 provides the necessary thrust to effectively complete a disposal maneuver without involving the spacecraft’s propulsion system. More on this technology here.
The new funding round sees the Italian Club of Investors in the front row with 1.3 million euro disbursed, while the remaining capital was supported by previous round investors like TTVenture, Como Venture and a group of entrepreneurs of the Como area. The company already works closely with the space agencies all over the world including NASA and the ESA and in 2016, for the first time in history, it will be launched a satellite with the system of D-Orbit, that will be able at the end of its life, to come back home and be removed from the space securely.
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