Kurs Orbital was founded in 2022 and headed by Volodymyr Usov, who previously served as Chairman of the State Space Agency of Ukraine. The startup aims to democratize in-orbit servicing solutions, including space debris removal, satellite relocation, de-orbiting, and satellite inspections, by providing reliable and cost-efficient rendezvous and docking technology.
The technology is built off the flight heritage of the Kurs rendezvous system, a Soviet-era technology that was developed to enable spacecraft to dock with the Mir space station. It’s module will be able to attach to “non-cooperative” targets (the ones that spacecraft that aren’t fitted with any hardware in advance).
“Currently, there are no off-the-shelf rendezvous and docking technologies available, so any company that wants to offer satellite servicing or logistics missions has to develop this technology on its own. This would take years, many missions, people and money to achieve. By contrast, our module allows such companies to enter the market much faster and with a modest expense” says Volodymyr Usov, Kurs Orbital CEO.
The round was led by OTB Ventures, a Warsaw-based venture capital firm in CEE, managing over $300 million to invest startups in spacetech, AI and automation, fintech, and cybersecurity. Credo Ventures, a Prague-based venture capital company, Galaxia, an Italian National Technology Transfer Hub for Aerospace, In-Q-Tel, and Inovo.vc, backing early-stage founders from Poland and the CEE region, also joined the financing.
“Spacetech is a potential new frontier that can experience 100x growth over the next 10 years. Vlad has a great clarity of thought in what, why, and how he wants to build which is backed by a proven track record of operating in spacetech and also being an entrepreneurial mind”, said Maciej Małysz, an investor at Inovo VC.
Kurs Orbital plans to have the first ARCap module ready for space in the Q4 of 2025 and also to expand its 11-person team with the fresh capital.
