Last-mile orbital delivery service gets Boost! from ESA
Swiss start-up Coactum is to press ahead with development of its in-space transportation service to bring small satellites into their targeted orbital destinations, with support from ESA’s Boost! programme.
Boost! co-funding worth €390,000 will support design and development activities for Coactum’s volume-efficient propellant storage system, a critical component in its orbital manoeuvring vehicle concept.
Last-mile in-space transportation is an attractive service for small satellites, which are often launched as secondary, piggyback or ride-share payloads because these arrangements can be much cheaper than buying a dedicated launch. However, cost saving comes at a price – shared launches generally place small satellites in an orbit dictated by the mission requirements of a principal payload, or which is a compromise between the needs of the ride-share payloads.
But small satellites equipped with a “last-mile” delivery capability can economically reach a more optimum orbit. Coactum intends to provide an affordable system for achieving transitions between orbits, even beyond low Earth orbit.
Proposed advantages of Coactum’s system include high-thrust propulsion to reduce time to target orbit. The system is being designed for a five-year mission life and features storable, non-toxic propellants.
ESA’s head of Space Transportation Strategy and Institutional Launches, Lucia Linares, said: “In-space transportation is seeing rapid growth to serve specific requirements of customers to move efficiently in space. Competitive and flexible European deployment capabilities for in-space transportation are therefore critical in the space economy, and Coactum’s vision is the sort of proposition that Boost! was designed to bolster.”
This is the first support contract signed with a Swiss company since Switzerland joined the Boost! programme in summer 2022.