Open Cosmos gets £5m grant for R&D and manufacturing

The grant will also see Open Cosmos strengthen its satellite data and analytics expertise for DataCosmos, through stronger links with Space Park Leicester – the £100 million space hub set up by the University of Leicester.

Open Cosmos has been awarded a £5 million project from the UK government’s Space Clusters and Infrastructure Fund (SCIF).

“This funding will accelerate our mission to democratise access to critical space infrastructure by allowing faster integration of bigger payloads onboard our satellites,” says CEO and founder Rafel Siquier (pictured).

Open Cosmos will use the funding to expand its manufacturing and R&D capability for microsatellite and constellation markets, while extending its reach in data commercialisation and expertise.

Open Cosmos is expanding its industrial R&D and manufacturing capability at its Harwell campus site by installing new test facilities such as a vibration table and a TVAC chamber.

These facilities are crucial for scaling the speed and size of satellite production – Open Cosmos will more than double its capacity.

Constellation production is essential for improving the revisit rate of satellite data, while larger satellites enable more technologically complex and demanding payloads to be hosted, broadening the diversity of satellite data that Open Cosmos will deliver through its data platform DataCosmos.

Open Cosmos was founded in 2015 to democratise access to space. The company delivers end-to-end telecommunications, Earth Observation (EO), navigation, and scientific missions.

It designs, builds, launches and operates advanced satellites through its OpenOrbit offering, enables organisations to access and share data via its mutualised OpenConstellation infrastructure and offers AI-powered data analysis from a growing range of satellite sources and analytic partners via its DataCosmos platform.

In September, Open Cosmos raised $50 million in Series B funding – the first time the company had raised external funding since 2018.

The company was involved in the MANTIS satellite launched two weeks ago, supported by ESA and co-funded by UKSA, and was recently selected by the National Commission for Aerospace Research and Development (CONIDA) to develop a data platform aimed at transforming geospatial data distribution in Peru.