WASHINGTON — A French startup developing a space situational awareness (SSA) system has raised $10.9 million to build out its tracking network.
Aldoria, a company previously known as Share My Space, announced Jan. 23 it raised 10 million euros ($10.9 million) in a Series A round. Starquest Capital, a French venture fund, led the round, with participation from the European Innovation Council Fund, the French government’s Deeptech 2030 fund, Expansion Ventures, Space Founders France and Wind Capital.
The company currently operates a network of six optical telescopes that track objects in orbit. The funding will be used in part to expand that network to 12 telescopes by 2025, said Romain Lucken, chief executive of Aldoria, in an interview.
The company also wants to enhance its systems for processing the data from those telescopes and identifying potential conjunctions. “The core of our development is really to strengthen and industrialize this orbital information system, as we call it, to be able to process more data and to secure the collection, processing and distribution of the data and services,” he said.
Aldoria plans to invest in research and development for SSA. “We have to develop other types of sensors to be to be able to enhance our revisits and to better characterize objects,” he said. That the work will be a combination of in-house development and partnerships with others, such as the French aerospace research center ONERA, which is working on radar tracking technologies.
Lucken said the strongest demand for its services comes from governments. That includes the European Union Space Surveillance and Tracking, or EU SST, network, as well as the European Space Agency and French space agency CNES. There is a “strong interest” from the U.S. government as well, he said, including the Traffic Coordination System for Space, or TraCSS, being developed by the Office of Space Commerce.
Aldoria also has several private…
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