NewOrbit said its first Very Low Earth Orbit mission, called NEO-1, is scheduled for between July and September 2028, another reminder that Europe’s space money keeps finding its way upward while ordinary life stays grounded. The Reading company, based in Caversham, said its satellites are designed to operate between 200 and 300km above Earth, about two-to-three times closer than most satellites. That altitude, it said, has been difficult because of atmospheric drag and other conditions. Hard for machines. Easy enough for the institutions and investors that keep funding them.
Orbit for Capital
NewOrbit said two missions have operated below 300km before: the European project GOCE, or Gravity Field and Steady-State Ocean Circulation Explorer, which operated for four-and-a-half years, and the Japanese Super Low Altitude Satellite Tsubame. Genesia, an optics specialist that built the telescope with which Tsubame captured images from a record low altitude of 167.4km, is NewOrbit's first customer. NewOrbit said flying closer to Earth means better images can be captured with smaller and cheaper systems, and it hopes its satellites will operate reliably for five years. CEO and co-founder Anatolii Papulov said the partnership "brings an extraordinary concentration of VLEO experience onto one commercial mission". The phrase says plenty. Experience, concentrated, commercialised, packaged for the market.
French President Emmanuel Macron is advocating higher investment and cross-national European collaboration to revitalise Europe’s space industry, aiming to boost capabilities in space exploration and technology. The language is polished, the direction familiar. More public backing, more continental coordination, more industrial muscle for a sector that already knows how to turn state ambition into private advantage. The people at the bottom get told this is progress. The contracts go elsewhere.
Microgravity, Monetised
Starlab Space LLC and the Center for Space and Aviation Switzerland and Liechtenstein, or CSA, announced an international Call for Proposals for advanced microgravity research and commercialization aboard the International Space Station. The announcement said up to four selected teams will have their investigations flown to and conducted on the ISS, with Starlab covering access to space. The initiative will provide researchers with funded access to microgravity research opportunities and generate data that can advance the maturation of their business models. That’s the pitch: public-sounding opportunity, private business logic.
Luis Zea, Ph.D., chief scientist of Starlab, said: “Many innovative space-enabled business ideas require data and experimentation in microgravity to demonstrate the feasibility of the underlying business model, assess potential return on investment, and improve scientific, technical, or process performance. Yet access to microgravity remains a significant barrier to testing and advancing these ideas.” He said Starlab aims to help organizations generate the evidence needed to advance their concepts toward viable applications and, ultimately, potential commercialization and ongoing use of the Starlab Space Station. The station is not presented as a commons. It’s a pipeline.
Up to four proposals will be selected: one Starlab-funded award open to a principal investigator from an organization based anywhere in the world and three awards through a joint opportunity funded by Starlab, CSA and the Canton of Zurich for teams with a PI located in the Canton of Zurich. Selected investigations will fly aboard the ISS using BioServe Space Technologies' Group Activation Pack hardware, which contains eight Fluid Processing Apparatuses and enables controlled activation and termination of experiments in orbit. Awardees will receive support for payload integration, launch, on-orbit operations, crew time and return of experimental samples. Research areas eligible for consideration include microorganisms, mammalian cells and tissues, viruses and bacteria, protein crystal growth, fluid dynamics and mixing, biomaterials and plant research.
Starlab said it is particularly interested in investigations that can generate evidence supporting future scientific, commercial or operational applications of microgravity, including potential future utilization aboard Starlab. Brad Henderson, chief commercial officer of Starlab, said: “Access to microgravity should not be the barrier that prevents a promising idea from becoming a viable business.” He said Starlab is helping innovators generate the evidence needed to validate their science, technology and business models, while building the pipeline of future customers who will help make commercial space a sustainable and growing industry. The sentence is blunt. The mission is blunter.
The two-step proposal process opened Sept. 11, with Step-1 proposal questions due Sept. 25 and Step-1 proposals due Oct. 9. Selected teams will advance to a second phase of evaluation, with award notifications anticipated in December 2026 and flight opportunities targeted for 2028. Starlab Space is a U.S.-led, global joint venture among Voyager Technologies, Airbus, Mitsubishi Corporation, MDA Space, Palantir Technologies and Space Applications Services, with strategic partners including Hilton, Journey, Northrop Grumman and The Ohio State University. It is developing a next-generation, AI-enabled commercial space station, aiming to ensure continued human presence in low-Earth orbit and a seamless transition of microgravity science and research alongside the retirement of the International Space Station.
Europe as Hub, Market as Logic
The Center for Space and Aviation Switzerland and Liechtenstein and the Switzerland Innovation Park Zurich in Dübendorf are building one of Europe’s most complete ecosystems for end-to-end space and aviation research, technology development and operational implementation. The CSA is a legal entity of 13 leading institutions from Switzerland and Liechtenstein with strong experience in space and aviation. Together, CSA and SIPZ are creating a European hub for research, trade and logistics, serving as a transatlantic bridge between European space innovation and Florida’s spaceport system. The announcement said this includes direct flight connections between Dübendorf and the launch sites, enabling the rapid and seamless transfer of space systems, payloads and products, connecting European space innovation and the U.S. commercial space station ecosystem.
That’s the architecture in plain sight: institutions, logistics, trade, launch sites, and a seamless transfer of payloads and products. The language of collaboration covers a system built to move capital, hardware and expertise across borders with ease, while the borders themselves remain very real for everyone else. Europe’s space sector is being sold as a future. It reads more like a supply chain with better branding.