Madrid’s Orbital Paradigm aims to prove a cheaper path to orbital reentry

Summary

Francesco Cacciatore is a self-proclaimed skeptic. Yet after spending two decades in the European aerospace industry and hitting, as he put it, a “crisis,” he made an undeniably optimistic bet: he started a space company. “You ask yourself, ‘What am I doing?’” he said in a recent interview. “I got offered some interesting opportunities, but then I kind of collapsed and realized I wanted to try and build something myself.” That something turned out to be one of the most challenging problems in aerospace: reentry. Along with his cofounder Víctor Gómez García, Cacciatore founded Orbital Paradigm, a Madrid-based startup building a reentry capsule to unlock new markets for materials created in zero gravity. In less than two years, with a team of nine and less than €1 million, the company built a test capsule dubbed KID, a precursor to a future reusable space capsule called Kestrel. KID is deliberately minimal: it weighs around 25 kilograms and is roughly 16 inches across, with no propulsion. It will mark the first time the startup puts hardware on orbit. orbital paradigm cofounders Francesco Cacciatore and Víctor Gómez García The customers for this first demonstration mission include French space robotics startup Alatyr, Germany’s Leibniz University Hannover and a third unnamed customer. To date, the company has raised €1.5 million in seed funding from Id4, Demium, Pinama, Evercurious, and Akka. Orbital Paradigm didn’t initially set out to develop return capsules. The cofounders first envisioned in-space robotics, but prospective customers repeatedly said what they really wanted was a capability to go to orbit, stay a little while, and come back – repeatedly. Customers “don’t want to do a one-off,” Cacciatore said. Institutions, startups and companies frequently want to fly between three and six times a year, he observed. Biotech companies represent a potentially lucrative market because microgravity can enable new materials, drugs and therapies, and these applications o...