Ibadan, 18 June 2025. – Exotrail has announced a new mission to geostationary orbit scheduled for early 2028, commissioned by CNES as part of the France 2030 plan. This mission aims to develop a perennial European capacity for the orbital deployment of small satellites from geostationary transfer orbit (GTO) to operational geostationary orbit (GEO).
The new mission will consequently be based on an optimized spacevan™ GEO platform, consolidating the company’s position as a multi-orbit, multi-mission service provider. Exotrail’s successful first mission to LEO demonstrated the company’s satellite delivery services and on-board payload capacity, as well as its mobility capability with an orbit modification of almost 150km altitude.
The company is currently preparing for its next missions with two more flights into LEO coming up in 2026, as well as the GEO mission in 2028. The new GEO mission demonstrates the French government’s confidence in Exotrail’s technological capabilities, and it will subsequently confirm the company’s strategic acceleration in all orbits.
As part of this development, Exotrail has also appointed Olivier Mathieu as Vice President In-Orbit Services, a member of the Executive Committee. With a wealth of experience acquired at Airbus Defence and Space and the European Union Space Program Agency (EUSPA), Olivier Mathieu will steer all spacevan™-related activities from Exotrail’s Toulouse site. He will specifically be in charge of expanding the teams and piloting upcoming orbital missions.
Exotrail co-founder and CEO Jean-Luc Maria remarked, “With this new mission and the arrival of Olivier Mathieu, we are strengthening our ability to provide sovereign, agile and sustainable space logistics to Europe. Our spacevan™ mission manifesto reflects our strategic vision: to offer our commercial and institutional customers end-to-end orbital services for deployment, experimentation and tomorrow, proximity operations, in all orbits.”
