Project-S raises seed to map the debris threatening Europe's orbit

At 700 kilometres up, a fragment the size of a pea carries the energy of a hand grenade. It crosses a satellite's path at roughly ten kilometres per second, fast enough to punch through a hull and scatter a thousand new fragments into the same orbit. Ground radar sees almost none of it coming.

The orbits collecting the most debris are the ones collecting the most money. Communications constellations, imaging fleets, and a queue of orbital data-centre and manufacturing projects are crowding the same 500–800 kilometre shell. Orbit grows more valuable and more dangerous at the same rate.

Europe's blind spot in low Earth orbit

Ground radar and optical telescopes catalogue about 50,000 objects larger than ten centimetres. The European Space Agency estimates that more than 1.2 million objects above one centimetre are in orbit. The distance between those two numbers is where satellites die.

A one-centimetre fragment is enough to destroy a satellite. ESA's Jan Siminski puts the energy release at that of a hand grenade, which is a polite way of describing an event no operator can insure around. Between 700 and 800 kilometres, a collision produces debris clouds that persist for centuries and keep colliding.

Regulation has started to catch up. A new EU space law requires operators to dispose of their spacecraft, which turns debris mitigation from a public-relations gesture into a compliance line item. As we wrote in September, space-domain awareness has become the traffic-control layer of the commercial orbit economy.

What Project-S actually builds

Four components sit in the company's stack, ordered by how hard each is to qualify in orbit.

The first is the sensor, a radar payload designed to resolve objects as small as a millimetre and packaged at CubeSat scale. The second is the analytics layer, which converts raw radar returns into conjunction-risk assessments: a probability that two tracked objects will meet, and when. The third is decision-support software that recommends a manoeuvre to a constellation operator and prices the fuel it will cost. The fourth, further out, is active debris removal — spacecraft that capture or de-orbit high-risk objects outright.

The middle two layers are software, and software can be sold before the hardware flies. That is why the seed money funds pilot campaigns with commercial fleet managers alongside ground testing of the radar. Revenue can arrive before the constellation does.

Radar carries an advantage over the optical telescopes that do most of today's tracking. It illuminates a target with its own signal, so it works at night and through cloud — the two conditions that blind a ground camera. A radar in orbit also sits far closer to the debris it hunts than a station fixed to the Earth, which is the difference between detecting a fragment and inferring it after a collision.

Method comparison based on ESA space-debris programme descriptions, 2025

None of that removes the hard part. A radar that works on a bench must survive launch vibration, vacuum, thermal cycling and radiation before it becomes an operational sensor. The company says the round funds that path directly: ground testing now, flight qualification next.

Project-S pairs real technical depth with rare speed: a lean team that has already taken radar hardware from design to delivery.— Dora Trachana, Partner, Uni.Fund VC

The cheque is smaller than the problem

A multi-million-euro seed is modest next to the damage it is aimed at. Bavaria alone has committed more than €245 million to space projects, and the state handed Project-S about €1 million in co-funding without taking equity — a detail its founder, Leonidas Askianakis, tells Californian investors with some relish.

The trade-off is speed. Grant milestones run on public timetables, and a radar programme that slips a year slips with them. The company has promised its first orbital mission; the date matters less than whether the payload clears qualification on the first serious attempt.

Who else is chasing the same objects

The company is not alone, and its closest rival shares its postcode. Vyoma, also in Munich and also backed through ESA channels, sells orbital traffic-management software. In London, ODIN Space raised a $3 million seed in December 2025 to fly in-orbit debris sensors of its own. Each is chasing the same operator budgets.

The differentiation is where a company sits in the data chain. Vyoma's software ingests a catalogue assembled by others. ODIN measures what strikes its own hardware. It wants to own detection and manoeuvre recommendation together, a wider bet and a harder one to finance.

What has to go right

What does a qualified Project-S radar change by 2029?

Three ways this plays out