PRESS RELEASE: The newly created Kleos Space company is 100% owned by UK-based Magna Parva.
Kleos Space is active in geolocation services and develops a space infrastructure for geo-intelligence and signal intelligence applications with in-space manufacturing. Within the framework of this MoU, the developments and research to take place in Luxembourg are related to the project for in-space manufacturing of composite beams equipped with antennas.
Kleos Space will collaborate with EmTroniX, a Luxembourg-based company specialised in electronics development, as well as with the Luxembourg Institute of Science and Technology (LIST) on this subject. The government will support the development of the in-space manufacturing technology by providing funding through the Luxembourg space program (LuxIMPULSE).
Kleos Space has its premises at the national business incubator Technoport and starts its activities with five employees. By 2022, the company intends to employ up to 60 people in Luxembourg.
Andy Bowyer, director of Kleos Space, said: "We are particularly proud to nestle our new company in Luxembourg as the Grand-Duchy has been a forerunner in space technology since the late 80’s. Today it has a clear, defined and commercially focused Space strategy mainly with the world leading SpaceResources.lu initiative, which is closely aligned and highly complementary to our own. I have found Luxembourg to have a shallow bureaucracy – enabling responsiveness and a detailed understanding of the funding gap faced by high-growth ventures such as ours."
Étienne Schneider, Luxembourg’s deputy prime minister and minister of the economy, stated: “By widening the capabilities of the national space sector, the implementation of Kleos Space in the Grand-Duchy is confirming the constant expansion and consolidation of Luxembourg as a European hub for developing highly advanced space technologies in the context of the SpaceResources.lu initiative. The cooperation of Kleos with LIST as a renowned research organisation, the hosting of the company in a public incubator as well as the collaboration with other national private actors showcase the assets of the local expertise ecosystem and provide Kleos a promising starting position in Luxembourg.”
Cédric Lorant, CEO of EmTroniX, added: “EmTroniX is proud and delighted to have been selected as a major technical partner for this innovative and challenging project, our tasks being to design the arm deployment controller and the digital receiver for the geo-localisation. Kleos comes thereby perfectly in line with the engineering service offer in space electronics design and manufacturing that EmTroniX is currently developing in Luxembourg.”
Professor Jens Kreisel, director of MRT-LIST, stated: “Uniting space technology and composite materials, two key focus areas of LIST's Materials Research and Technology Department, the collaboration with Kleos is of great strategic interest for our institute. We are working with the Ministry of the Economy on a growing number of space-related industrial partnerships and we are aiming to sustain this trend.”
Dr Damien Lenoble, who heads the Nanotechnologies and Nanomaterials Unit and the partnership development at MRT-LIST, added: “The current partnership with Kleos will allow us to further enhance and test Kleos' composite materials, relying strongly on the new National Composite Center facilities at LIST. It is an honour for us to support Kleos in developing the ideal material solutions for the pultrusion, assembly and deployment of their antennas in orbit.”
