Recover satellite data from Space that can be useful on Earth by overcoming the existing land connectivity obstacles. A dream that is coming true thanks to a start-up from Brescia set up in 2015 specializing in the design, manufacture and installation of small satellites. A company supported by Primo Space, the first technological venture capital fund that makes investments in the field of Space. For FARE INSIEME STARUP, Giampaolo Colletti interviewed Guido Parissenti, co-founder and CEO of Apogeo Space.
FARE INSIEME STARTUP is the spin-off of the FARE INSIEME dedicated to presenting some businesses that form part of the Primo Ventures portfolio, a company that manages funds specializing in the digital sector and new space economy. Confindustria Emilia has set up a partnership with Primo Ventures with the objective of providing its associates with new opportunities for growth thanks to the presentation of the most innovative start-ups on the market. Here are some of their stories.
by Giampaolo Colletti
@gpcolletti
“If we were alone, the immensity would really be a waste.” Thus wrote Isaac Asimov in the 1950s. He was an American biochemist and writer, as well as one of the fathers of the science fiction genre, read all over the world, and creator of the three laws of robotics which became a point of reference for the development of artificial intelligence. The entrepreneurial adventure we are about to tell you leads us all the way into Space, yet with our feet resting firmly on the ground. Because this story illustrates a dream that has become a reality, i.e that of creating a constellation of nano-satellites capable of providing connectivity services all over the world. It was Apogeo Space that had the intuition, a start-up from Brescia set up in 2015 and specializing in the design, manufacturing and installation of small satellites. A company supported by Primo Space, the first technological venture capital fund that makes investments in the field of Space. Apogeo, considered among the most interesting European businesses for international investors, is producing the nano-satellites that will form part of the constellation in series and twenty of them will already become operational in space between the end of 2023 and January 2024. With this first deployment of satellites, it will be possible to recover data from devices connected with the Internet of Things anywhere with a maximum waiting time of 30 minutes.
Company profile. Welcome to the Space economy, which is growing in leaps and bounds. According to Space Foundation, investments in this field increased by 50% between 2010 and 2020, reaching almost €450 billion between private entities and government agencies. Everything started with Venture builder Vento di Torino and a selection of thirty people who had a single ambitious objective - creating innovative start-ups. “We chose to pursue the data provided by orbiting satellites, which generate a lot of information that is not fully taken advantage of. The European Space Agency is still pushing to have private entities take advantage of the potential of European satellites. We are currently building the first Italian nano-satellite constellation for the supply of a global connectivity service for IoT devices,” illustrated Giudo Parissenti, co-founder and CEO of Apogeo Space. The network, which will be completed by 2030, will enable other companies to extend their capacity for industrial IoT. All of this will improve monitoring systems for agriculture and large infrastructures as well as the tracking of ships and the ocean transfer of means and goods. This is a momentous change: compared with the terrestrial infrastructures, which have objective capacity limitations, satellites will make it possible to overcome the obstacles to connections between the various countries in the world. “Up to now, we have been employing mobile phone networks, but there was always the problem of having to switch Sim cards or find ones that would work for everyone in the various countries. Now, they will be able to access new markets or facilitate the existing ones from the point of view of logistics,” says Parissenti.
Unity forms a network. In the meantime, the company looks to the future via innovative alliances that used to be unthinkable up until a short while ago, where silos were often used even in research. But the new generation of start-uppers combine skill, knowledge and ambition. This is the approach that makes the difference when scaling global - and even space - markets. So, in November 2022, Apogeo Space signed the agreement to acquire multiple launches starting from 2023 for the launch of its own satellites with D-Orbit, a logistic and orbit transport company with its headquarters based in Fino Mornasco (Como). But Apogeo Space also collaborated with many other companies and research institutes worldwide operating in the space sector or in other fields which share the ambition of expanding their services using space technology: these include Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica, Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Osservatorio Astronomico di Brera and that of Bologna. Plus the Politecnico in Milan and the University of Brescia. Once again, creating innovative and visionary partnerships is the distinguishing trait of the most ambitious organizations.
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