Riga-based SpaceTech startup Deep Space Energy has raised a complete €930k to additional develop a radioisotopic generator towards commercialisation, in a bid to strengthen the European sovereign area and protection business and energy Moon floor exploration.
The funding was made up of its €350k pre-Seed spherical led by Outlast Fund and Linas Sargautis, an angel investor and a former co-founder of NanoAvionics. The corporate additionally secured extra €580k in public contracts and grants by the European House Company (ESA), NATO DIANA, and the Latvian authorities.
“Our know-how, which has already been validated within the laboratory, has a number of purposes throughout the defence and area sectors. First, we’re growing an auxiliary power supply to reinforce the resilience of strategic satellites. It supplies the redundancy of satellite tv for pc energy programs by supplying backup energy that doesn’t rely on photo voltaic power, making it essential for high-value army reconnaissance belongings,” says Mihails Ščepanskis, founder and CEO of the corporate.
Within the 2025–2026 interval, EU-Startups has reported substantial capital flows into the European SpaceTech sector, primarily at Seed and Sequence A stage.
Germany’s Reflex Aerospace secured €50 million to scale sovereign satellite tv for pc platforms, whereas France’s Infinite Orbits raised €40 million to increase in-orbit servicing capabilities. Additionally in France, Look Up attracted €50 million to develop its radar-based area surveillance community, and UNIVITY secured €31 million to speed up growth of a space-based 5G constellation.
In Germany, Marble Imaging raised €5.3 million to scale its very excessive decision Earth statement satellites forward of launch, whereas Spain’s Kreios Space secured €8 million to advance propulsion programs for very low Earth orbit. Italy’s Astradyne raised €2 million to commercialise ultralight photo voltaic panels, and Spain’s Orbital Paradigm closed a €1.5 million pre-Seed spherical to develop reusable area capsules.
Collectively, these rounds characterize roughly €187 million in disclosed funding transferring into European SpaceTech throughout adjoining segments together with satellite tv for pc infrastructure, propulsion, communications, servicing and statement.
In opposition to this backdrop, Deep House Vitality’s €930k elevate positions it at an earlier proof-of-concept stage inside the ecosystem, with a concentrate on power resilience for satellites and lunar missions somewhat than platform deployment.
“As Europe is making an attempt to turn into extra impartial, it’s crucial to provide satellites with superior capabilities on our personal. Our know-how supplies an auxiliary power supply for satellites, which makes them extra resilient to non-kinetic assaults and malfunctions,” Mihails provides.
Based in 2022, Deep House Vitality is growing a brand new radioisotope energy generator for area that makes use of the warmth produced by the nuclear self-decay of radioisotopes – supplies extractable from waste of economic nuclear reactors.
The product goals for purposes in deep area science missions, lunar floor missions and high-value protection satellites. Their answer converts that warmth into electrical energy, requiring 5 instances much less radioisotope gas than a thermo-electric generator (RTG), at present utilized in area.
The corporate highlighted that its radioisotope-based power generator just isn’t designed for any form of weapons. It can goal high-value, dual-use satellites to extend their resilience and operational reliability. The first focus is on satellites working in Medium Earth Orbit (MEO), Geostationary Orbit (GEO) and Extremely Elliptical Orbit (HEO), that are all essential for contemporary army reconnaissance and early-warning programs.
These satellites help a spread of defence features, from artificial aperture radar (SAR)
satellites for detecting troop concentrations via clouds and foliage, to sign intelligence for intercepting communications and radio transmissions, in addition to missile-launch detection, which is important for anti-missile protection programs.
Mihails says that the continued struggle in Ukraine clearly demonstrated the decisive position of satellite-based reconnaissance knowledge for contemporary warfare. In 2025, Ukraine misplaced its beachhead in Russian Kursk Oblast at a time when the US briefly terminated the sharing of satellite tv for pc intelligence.
This highlights the strategic significance of satellite-based reconnaissance knowledge and in addition signifies the strategic vulnerability of Europe, which largely depends on the US defencs area belongings, particularly for high-value GEO satellites.
Egita Poļanska, accomplice on the lead investor Outlast Fund, shares: “House power tech has been caught with sure limitations for many years, however we’re lastly seeing the items come collectively for an actual breakthrough – new supplies, smarter energy programs, and precise business demand for lunar operations.
“Deep House Vitality is constructing the infrastructure that can actually energy the following chapter of area exploration and business. As Europe ramps up its area ambitions, we’d like our personal firms to guide in these foundational applied sciences. We’re thrilled to again this staff and actually fairly excited to have an precise moonshot in our portfolio, in probably the most literal sense doable.”
In the long run, the corporate goals to concentrate on the Moon economic system. The radioisotope energy generator seems to be to deal with essential power challenges within the subsequent section of lunar exploration, together with NASA and ESA’s Artemis, Argonaut and lunar rover programmes, in addition to the Moon Village framework. Specifically, the know-how is designed to help lunar night time survival and operations in completely shadowed areas, enabling prolonged scouting and prospecting missions.
On the Moon, the place the temperatures at night time drop under 150 levels Celsius, and nights final for roughly 354 hours, moonrovers can’t depend on solar energy.
The corporate’s know-how requires roughly 2kg of Americium-241 gas to generate 50W of energy for a lunar rover, in contrast with round 10kg of radioisotope materials wanted by legacy RTG programs for comparable output. Given present projections that Americium-241 manufacturing capability will attain round 10kg per 12 months by the mid-2030s, this effectivity might allow lunar exploration missions to start greater than 5 years earlier and at as much as 5 instances the mission quantity.
In consequence, business lunar actions and useful resource utilisation might emerge considerably before beforehand anticipated.
In keeping with Ščepanskis, the corporate’s know-how can considerably improve the economics of moon rover missions by enabling them to final a number of day-night cycles up to a couple years. The only real bills of bringing payload to the Moon value as much as 1,000,000 euros per kilogram; thus, by enhancing the lifetime of the rovers, the corporate helps to avoid wasting lots of of thousands and thousands.
Linas Sargautis provides: “The Baltic area is more and more recognised for its innovation in area know-how, with Deep House Vitality serving as one other robust instance. By supporting Deep House Vitality, we’re serving to to determine a stable basis for the way forward for area frontier exploration, corresponding to lunar and deep-space missions, increasing humanity’s data and footprint, whereas additionally contributing to European area defence capabilities.
“I’m proud to help the corporate’s journey by strengthening the staff’s connections with main area programs integrators, in addition to supporting the corporate’s enlargement and contracting plans to construct the required experience on the subsystem integration degree.”
