- GATE Space has secured €6.3 million in EU grants and equity funding through the EIC Accelerator.
- The company’s propulsion system is set to launch on BeaconSat, Austria’s first military satellite, in February 2027.
- The Vienna-based startup is also developing hardware for ASTRAL, Europe’s first in-orbit refuelling mission.
Most stories about satellite funding focus on getting payloads into orbit. GATE Space’s recent funding, however, is about what happens after satellites arrive: detecting radio interference that adversaries use to jam and spoof GPS and Galileo signals from far above Earth.
The Vienna-based startup has now received €6.3 million in grants and equity from the European Commission’s EIC Accelerator, one of Europe’s most selective deep-tech funding programs, to prepare its propulsion hardware for this mission.
What GATE Space builds
GATE Space, known as Gate Space Innovation GmbH, was founded in 2022 by seven graduates from the TU Wien Space Team, a student rocketry group at Vienna’s technical university.
Moritz Novak is the chief executive, with co-founders Clemens Weisgram as chief financial officer, Alexander Sebo as chief technology officer, and Taras Weinl as chief operating officer. The company is based in Vienna, with additional locations in Lower Austria and San Francisco, and has about two dozen employees.
The startup makes chemical propulsion systems that help satellites move once they are in orbit. These systems allow satellites to adjust their position, avoid debris, dock with other spacecraft, and eventually deorbit safely rather than becoming space junk.
The main product, the GATE Jetpack, is a plug-and-play unit for ESPA-class satellites weighing between 50 and 500 kilograms, which the company says is the most common size for satellites launched today. For instance, if a satellite ends up in the wrong orbit during a shared launch, it can use GATE Space’s hardware to correct its path rather than redesigning the mission.
A jamming problem we keep running into
GATE Space is not the first company TFN has reported on to tackle this problem, and that trend is important. Aquark Technologies raised €5 million to develop quantum positioning sensors after research showed that GPS interference incidents increased by 2,000% between 2018 and 2021, costing about £1 billion a day in potential losses. UK-based Shield Space raised £2 million to protect satellites from jamming and interference, with its first flight also planned for 2027—the same year GATE Space’s hardware will launch on BeaconSat.
As a PitchBook analyst told TFN earlier this year, more investment is going into defence-linked space systems. GATE Space mainly builds propulsion systems, not jamming detectors, but BeaconSat puts it right in the middle of this growing demand.
A crowded field chasing the same orbit
The company competes for attention, though not always for the same contracts, with Austria’s Enpulsion, a leader in electric propulsion for micro- and nanosatellites with over 320 units in orbit, and US-based Orbion Space Technology, which makes plasma thrusters for small satellites.
GATE Space sets itself apart by focusing on thrust: electric propulsion is efficient but slow, while its chemical systems are designed for quick, powerful manoeuvres needed for collision avoidance and rapid docking.
The new funding includes non-dilutive R&D grants and equity investment from the European Investment Bank. This follows earlier support from Austria’s FFG research agency, a €750,000 guarantee from Austria Wirtschaftsservice, and backing from the Techstars Space Accelerator. The company says this round brings its total funding to about $22 million.
GATE Space was the only company from the space, aerospace, and defence sectors chosen in the current EIC Accelerator round, with acceptance rates as low as 6%. The money will help industrialise its propulsion technology and scale up production for two main missions: BeaconSat in February 2027, and ASTRAL, a mission backed by the European Space Agency and UK Space Agency, led by Orbit Fab, which aims for Europe’s first autonomous satellite docking and propellant transfer in 2028. Novak also said the company has signed confidential customer contracts for 2027 and beyond.
The market GATE Space is targeting is growing quickly, though estimates vary. Grand View Research values the global satellite propulsion market at $11.05 billion in 2024, with growth expected to reach $23.24 billion by 2030.
“This funding is an extraordinary validation of our technology, our team, and our vision. It enables us to significantly accelerate our growth strategy and further strengthen our position as a leading provider of mobility and infrastructure solutions in space,” Novak concludes.
GATE Space is betting that as orbits become more crowded and competitive, building the engines will be more valuable than building the satellites themselves. Enough other small European companies share this view that it is starting to look less like a niche and more like a crowded field.
