AIRMO closed a €5 million (€5M) seed round to fund the launch of its first greenhouse-gas-monitoring satellite no earlier than next year and to expand its drone and airplane monitoring into the Middle East.

AIRMO was founded in Germany in 2022 to develop more accurate technology to detect methane leaks from orbit.

AIRMO is developing a short-wave infrared imager combined with a proprietary micro-LIDAR and is working to miniaturize that sensor to fly on a satellite.

Unconventional Ventures, Kopa Ventures, Desai Ventures, Hypernova, and New Venture Securities participated in AIRMO’s €5 million seed round.

AIRMO’s seed round totaled approximately $5.8 million in U.S. dollars.

Matthias Fackler and Francesco Starace, two partners at EQT, contributed to AIRMO’s seed round.

AIRMO previously raised a €5.2 million pre-seed round in 2023.

Ananda Impact Ventures led AIRMO’s €5 million seed round.

The FCC has begun a comprehensive review of its licensing and regulatory framework for space communications.

The FCC identifies an acute shortage of usable and readily accessible spectrum for telemetry, tracking, and command that could delay or prevent growth of domestic space technologies.

FCC Chairman Brendan Carr proposed a plan to provide spectrum abundance for emergent space operations such as orbital laboratories, satellite repairs, and private inhabitable spacecraft.

The FCC states that reliable spectrum access is mandatory for safety functions like telemetry, tracking, and command to control spacecraft in orbit.

The FCC’s planned proceeding would explore clarifying its rules so emergent space operations have reliable access to spectrum for telemetry, tracking, and command.

The FCC’s planned proceeding would seek to identify new spectrum bands that meet the safety and operational needs of emergent space activities.

The draft Notice of Proposed Rulemaking would clarify and expand the FCC’s traditional regulatory classifications to give emergent operations more predictable spectrum access.

Chairman Brendan Carr circulated a draft Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that would use market-based principles to put spectrum resources to more intensive use for the space economy.

Earlier in the year, the FCC launched a proceeding to release up to 20,000 megahertz of spectrum for traditional connectivity services, including high-speed broadband from low-Earth-orbit constellations.

If adopted by a full Commission vote in March, the FCC will open a formal proceeding to address spectrum needs of emergent space technologies.

The FCC’s proceeding would explore dedicating new spectrum bands to provide a clear, reliable, and expeditious path to support new space technologies and services.

Competitive space businesses need modular, repeatable products with recurring services, industrialized and certified scalable processes, and personnel skilled in program management, finance, commercial activities, and risk management while preserving technical expertise.

Value creation in the space sector depends on mapping where value is created, making intangibles financeable with numbers and milestones, and opening capital and governance to scale businesses.

The space economy includes upstream activities such as research and development, production, integration, and launch; a midstream layer of operations, links, ground stations, platforms, security, and continuity of service; and downstream use of satellite signals and data for products and services.

Alessandro Sannini is a private equity investor and advisor with experience in growth finance and was an early promoter of the minibond market in Italy.

Alessandro Sannini is a columnist for Milano Finanza, Agenda Digitale, Formiche, Airpress, Space Economy 360, Affaritaliani.it, and CorCom.

Alessandro Sannini has been a guest speaker at the Universities of Trento, Bologna, and Venice.

Alessandro Sannini has extended his activity to the space economy and considers it a strategic lever for Italy’s industrial development.

Fragmentation of the space supply chain exposes specialized SMEs to the risk of remaining permanent subcontractors or becoming acquisition targets for capital-rich buyers.

Alessandro Sannini founded or contributed to the minibond.eu initiative to promote corporate bond diffusion for Italian SMEs.

Public programs and funds function effectively for the space sector when they activate private capital, facilitate corporate aggregation, reward growth, and reduce regulatory uncertainty.

Leonella Gori completed the International Teachers Program (ITP) in 2009 and has received the SDA Bocconi Teaching Award for Best Teacher in the Master Specialist category twice.

Observation of Earth generates large volumes of data, and economic sustainability in Earth observation is created by entities that refine, contextualize, and incorporate raw data into operational decisions.

The Italian space supply chain is fragmented like a mosaic, which provides flexibility but makes consolidation and global market projection difficult.

A mid-cap gap exists in Italy where medium-sized enterprises that act as a bridge between large integrators and micro-specialists are insufficient.

Alessandro Sannini has provided advisory services to Fondazione Edoardo Amaldi, RIR/AIR Veneto, Twin Advisors, Novaeka, and more than 50 Italian and international companies in manufacturing, technology, finance, and aerospace sectors.

Open procurement, tools to help SMEs scale without underselling, incentives for constructive M&A, and clear rules reduce uncertainty that capital markets do not tolerate.

Leonella Gori is a member of the Commissione Italiana Spazio of Federmanager.

Leonella Gori earned a degree with honors in Business Administration from Università Bocconi and a PhD in Corporate Finance from Università di Trieste.

Value in the space sector accumulates where recurring revenues, software, platforms, analytics, and integrated services are developed rather than solely in hardware and engineering.

The public sector demand remains essential for the space market because it creates market certainty, reduces risk, and stabilizes demand for suppliers.

Leonella Gori is a professor of Corporate Finance at Università Bocconi and at Bocconi School of Management (SDA Bocconi).

Growth in the space sector requires integration across the value chain, industrial and process standards, and consortia with substantive governance.

Leonella Gori coauthored a book titled Private Equity Investor with Alessandro Sannini, published by Nuova Cultura in January 2026.

Italy’s space sector is characterized by a small number of large pivot companies and a constellation of highly specialized small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

Traditional bank-centered credit models prefer physical collateral and predictable cash flows, creating a financing mismatch for many space companies that hold prototypes, intellectual property, teams, and non-linear cash-flow profiles.

Investors in the space economy should look beyond unicorns and support future industrial champions through growth-oriented financing.

Sustainable commercial success in space requires companies to sell beyond institutional customers and to target cross-sector applications such as energy, agrifood, infrastructure, logistics, finance, and security.

Policy makers need to convert public investment initiatives into durable industry effects by treating public support as a lever rather than a crutch.

The space sector is capital-intensive and time-intensive, requiring upfront investments, long development cycles, certifications, and bearing technological risk with revenues that materialize after validation and commissioning.

Leonella Gori is a Fellow of the Baffi Centre on Economics, Finance and Regulation and of the Finance Department at Università Bocconi.

The Aurora Hall-effect thruster (HET) system is integrated into York Space Systems’ S-CLASS and M-CLASS satellite bus architectures.