Odessa businessman Volodymyr Usov registered in early March his new company Kurs Orbital, providing spacecraft service near-Earth orbit.
According to Forbes, Kurs Orbital intends to move, refuel and repair geostationary satellites, as well as remove them from orbit. Usov promises a potential market capacity for Kurs Orbital: more than $ 3 billion a year.
The company's immediate goal is to raise $ 6.5 million by August, which will be used to create a demonstration module for an automatic rendezvous system. If all goes according to plan, in 2023 a space tractor, as Usov calls it, will dock and explore a satellite in low Earth orbit.
From January to November 2020, Usov headed the State Space Agency of Ukraine. Graduated from the Odessa National Maritime University. Before joining the civil service, he created several startups, the most famous of which is Kwambio, which has not yet taken off, specialising in the development of 3D printers.
Most space startups invest in the production of launch vehicles. If all of these rockets are completed, then most of these startups will have nothing to get into orbit.
Volodymyr Usov, founder of Kurs Orbital
Orbital services, in which the supply is clearly not keeping up with the growing demand, is another matter.
If all goes according to plan, Kurs Orbital will carry out its first commercial in-orbit maintenance mission in 2025. By 2029, Usov expects to place a group of four "tractors" in orbit. For this, according to his calculations, it will be necessary to attract about $ 120 million.
