On the occasion of the NewSpace Europe conference, Bradford Space, Deep Space Industries (DSI) and the Luxembourg Space Agency announced they will take the next step towards developing critical low-cost spacecraft subsystems for deep space and earth-orbit missions.
The start of the programme is expected to kick-off in the next few weeks and will focus on the development and commercialization of key products in flight control, power management and deep space telecommunications.
In conjunction with Bradford Space and DSI, the support is made possible through the Luxembourg national programme, LuxIMPULSE and will develop existing subsystems as well as start preliminary design activities of new, complementary ones.
DSI aims to establish an engineering and manufacturing centre in Belval and will initially employ up to five staff under the lead of senior avionics engineer Alexander Finch. Bradford Space managing director Patrick van Put said: “We are grateful for our collaboration with the Luxembourg Space Agency and look forward to kicking off the next phase of our project in Luxembourg.”
Bradford Space acquired Deep Space Industries earlier this year in order to continue its work building an affordable spacecraft platform, Explorer, which can visit locations throughout the inner solar system, including asteroids, Mars, Venus, the Moon and other destinations of scientific and economic interest. Activities to build key spacecraft subsystems is the natural continuation of the R&D efforts that have been done in Luxembourg over the past two years. The subsystems manufactured in Luxembourg will form the core element of the Bradford Deep Space Explorer and other deep-space missions.
Bradford Space is an international group of spacecraft systems manufacturers and developers with locations in the Netherlands, Sweden, Luxembourg and the U.S. Bradford companies have built over 2000 products on hundreds of spacecraft during its existence, with focus on propulsion systems, attitude and orbit control products, space station facilities and deep space missions.
Deep Space Industries is the Luxembourg affiliate of the Bradford Space group. Its heritage derives from Deep Space Industries in California, which was founded in 2012 to lead the development of systems to investigate and make use of space resources, including those at the asteroids. In 2018, DSI became part of the Bradford Space group where it continues its focus on key systems to open up the value of the solar system.
