D-Orbit, the Italian spacetech scaleup operating in space infrastructure, logistics, and orbital transport, announces that on 10 July 2024 it formed a new company called D-Orbit USA, a joint venture with Mike Cassidy, Mark Krebs, Miles Gazic, Danny Field, and David Harrower to strengthen its presence in the satellite bus market in the US.
D-Orbit USA, based in Boulder, Colorado, is therefore part of the D-Orbit Group and focuses on the design, production and sale of satellite buses. The team consists of aerospace executives who bring extensive experience, particularly in qualification and acceptance testing of rigorous and comprehensive aerospace programmes, honed through their experience at, for example, SpaceX, Amazon’s Kuiper project, and OneWeb. The foundation of D-Orbit USA is strengthened by D-Orbit’s experience, as evidenced by 13 successful ION orbital missions, and a team of over 300 professionals, including highly specialised engineering and quality areas, dedicated to maintaining the highest standards of innovation and performance.
The D-Orbit USA team has extensive experience in space engineering. Mark Krebs has led attitude control, flight dynamics and vehicle integration teams in projects such as Starlink and Kuiper. Miles Gazic has developed avionics, flight and ground software for a wide variety of space programmes, including the first low earth orbit satellites for Amazon’s Kuiper, SpaceX’s Starlink, Capella Space and PlanetIQ projects. Danny Field was chief engineer at OneWeb, Raytheon, and General Atomics, and designed all primary and secondary structures for OneWeb’s Gen1 satellite. David Harrower has deep experience in low, medium and geostationary earth orbit satellites and network applications from his work at Terran Orbital, Kymeta Corporation, VT iDirect and Comtech. Mike Cassidy was CEO of Apollo Fusion, which built over 77 electric propulsion systems for many of the major US aerospace satellite suppliers.
“I am truly excited about our team and the flight heritage resulting from D-Orbit’s 13 successful orbital missions,” said Mike Cassidy, CEO of D-Orbit USA, in a note.I believe that this collaboration will enable us to respond very quickly to customers’ needs and offer extremely competitive solutions’.
D-Orbit chose to create this joint venture in the US in response to forecasts for the space industry, which suggest significant growth from an estimated value of around €500 billion at the end of 2023 to over €1 trillion by 2030.
Luca Rossettini, CEO of the D-Orbit Group adds: ‘The establishment of D-Orbit USA represents an important milestone in our strategic expansion into the US market. By combining the experience of the US-based team and the heritage of D-Orbit, we are ready to provide innovative, reliable and cost-effective solutions. This joint venture underlines our commitment to meeting the growing needs of the space industry and strengthens our position as a global leader in space infrastructure and logistics’.
D-Orbit is well positioned to accelerate its growth after the success of the funding round of Serie C, which ended at the end of 2023 with a first closing of around EUR 100 million. This round, which was one of the largest ever for a European space technology company, follows a stellar year for D-Orbit, which saw triple-digit annual revenue growth in 2023 from 2021, EU institutional contracts worth tens of millions of euros, and seven further missions of its ION orbital transport vehicle successfully completed. D-Orbit is headquartered in Italy and, in addition to its presence in the US, also has offices in Portugal and the UK. (photo: Christopher Michel – Mike Cassidy, CC BY 2.0)
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ©