With AerospaceLab, European space, opens up to a new industrial dimension. With the support of the European Investment Bank, and investment funds like Xange, AerospaceLab intends to cross a “mass production” threshold on the continent in order to meet global demand for microsatellites, which continues to speed up.
In 2024, the world market for nanosatellites and microsatellites was estimated at almost $ 4 billion and could reach 14 billion by 2030, an average annual growth of more than 20 % between 2025 and 2030. As for Europe, the size of the satellite market reached around $ 12.4 billion in 2025, with an expected annual increase in the order of 10 %. Despite this dynamic, North America concentrates approximately half of the market for small satellites, carried by SpaceX, Amazon Kuiper and Oneweb, while Europe only captures between 15 % and 17 % of world production.
In this context, AerospaceLab wants to make up for the European industrial deficit. In Charleroi, the company founded in 2018 by Benoît Deper built a 16,000 m² factory, presented as one of the largest satellite production infrastructure in Europe. Scheduled for 2026, this installation must employ 300 people and produce several hundred microsatellites per year. The objective is to offer a European alternative to American and Chinese industrial capacities, based on a modular design and automated chain to reduce costs and accelerate orbit.
France has specialized actors such as Hemeria, focused on nanosatellites, and Italy with Leonardo is preparing its own military and civil constellation of around forty units by 2028. In the Netherlands, Isispace stands out as one of the main suppliers of Cubesats. These initiatives testify to a real but dispersed dynamic, far from the rates of SpaceX and Planet Labs. The AerospaceLab factory, designed for the series and vertical integration, seeks to cross this industrial threshold which still lacks European space.
To finance this new stage, the company brought together 56 million euros in Equity with Airbus Ventures, a vehicle linked to the Dassault family, Imec.xpand II, BNP Paribas Fortis Private Equity, the Space Opportunities Syndicate group, the Flemand Torus Capital Fund, the entrepreneur Marc Dubaere as well as the Xange investment fund, already present from the Serie Carried out in 2019. To this funding is added a contribution of 38 million euros from the European Investment Bank, bringing the total of the Tour to 94 million euros. Since its creation, AerospaceLab has raised 105 million euros to become one of the few candidates for the industrialization of space in Europe.
