Spanish aerospace startup Kreios Space has raised \u20ac8 million in a seed funding round to support the launch of a demonstration mission of its air-breathing electric propulsion (ABEP) technology in very low Earth orbit (VLEO) in early 2027. The round was led by the NATO Innovation Fund and JOIN Capital, with participation from Grow Venture Partners, Xesgalicia, and Tasivia Global, bringing the company\u2019s total funding to over \u20ac10 million.<\/p>\n
Founded in 2021 by six Spanish aerospace engineers, Kreios has been developing its ABEP system, which uses atmospheric air in low orbits to generate thrust, allowing satellites to operate at lower altitudes than traditional propulsion systems. ABEP aims to mitigate drag without requiring large amounts of fuel, enabling long-duration missions in VLEO.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve seen plenty of companies using the term VLEO without really being in VLEO, going to the highest areas of it at like 350 km or 400 km and saying that\u2019s VLEO. Real VLEO is 200 kilometers,\u201d Kreios CEO Adr\u00edan Senar told Payload.<\/p>\n
Operating satellites at such low altitudes offers advantages for commercial and defense applications. Telecommunications satellites in VLEO can transmit signals faster and with greater precision, while Earth observation satellites can capture high-resolution images and deliver them in near real-time. Kreios expects to pursue dual-use missions, leveraging NATO partnerships for government contracts and highlighting commercial benefits for civil applications.<\/p>\n
Senar added that ABEP provides significant performance improvements without increasing costs compared with conventional low Earth orbit operations. \u201c[With ABEP] you keep the same cost as we would have in LEO, but get an improvement in performance between three to sixteen times depending on the payload,\u201d he said. \u201cBasically we aim to be the leaders in very low Earth orbit\u2026We have the resources, the partners, and the technology, so that\u2019s our vision.\u201d<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Spanish aerospace startup Kreios Space has raised \u20ac8 million in a seed funding round to support the launch of a demonstration mission of its air-breathing electric propulsion (ABEP) technology in very low Earth orbit (VLEO) in early 2027. The round was led by the NATO Innovation Fund and JOIN Capital, with participation from Grow Venture […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":19997,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[244,6032,20,3030,489],"class_list":["post-19995","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-europe","tag-kreios-space","tag-satellite","tag-spain","tag-startup"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19995"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=19995"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19995\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/19997"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=19995"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=19995"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=19995"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}