The UK arm of Italian space logistics company D-Orbit, based on the Harwell Campus in Oxfordshire, working on satellite delivery, in-orbit services and space safety.
D-Orbit builds what it calls space logistics: ways of moving and looking after satellites once they are above the atmosphere. Its main product is the ION Satellite Carrier, an orbital transfer vehicle, which you can think of as a space tug. It rides into space on a rocket, then releases each customer's satellite into its own chosen orbit, and it can also carry equipment for testing in space. The company also makes a decommissioning device for safely taking old satellites out of orbit, subsystems such as flight computers, and a planned servicing vehicle for satellites in geostationary orbit. A directory entry for the UK company describes it as working on AI data processing and robotics, space safety and responsive launch.
The parent company was founded in 2011 by Luca Rossettini, its chief executive, and Renato Panesi, and is headquartered in Como, Italy. D-Orbit's own words are that it aims to "develop the world's first space logistics infrastructure", covering satellite deployment, in-orbit servicing and end-of-life management. Viney Dhiri, the UK head of business development, said in 2023 that the company does not exist without the success of others, meaning its customers. That article also described D-Orbit as a B Corp, though a second company page we read did not mention it, so treat that as unconfirmed.
In the UK, D-Orbit has offices inside the Satellite Applications Catapult at the Harwell Science and Innovation Campus in Oxfordshire. A company directory lists its address as the R103 building on Fermi Avenue at Harwell Campus and says the UK company was founded in 2019. The wider company also has offices in Portugal and the United States, and about 200 employees worldwide in 2022, which is an older figure. We could not find a UK-only headcount.
The 2023 article gives a flavour of what the UK team works on: launching satellites to target orbits, in-orbit servicing and debris removal, and hosting customer payloads for demonstrations. It also mentions Space Cloud Services, which aims to put cloud and edge computing in orbit, with partners including Amazon Web Services and the Swedish company Unibap, and a European Space Agency contract linked to the IRIDE Earth observation constellation. The company's pages we could read say little about working culture, so we have not described one.
A space logistics company needs mission designers, who plan exactly how a satellite should travel, flight software and electronics engineers, spacecraft operators, and business development and customer teams like Mr Dhiri's, who talk to satellite builders and operators. The UK team is small compared with the Italian headquarters, so ask the company how its UK roles are organised. Physics, engineering, computing and business degrees all feed into a company like this, and Harwell is one of the UK's biggest space clusters.
Website: d-orbit.com
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