A UK startup just raised $18.5 million to fly satellites where nobody else can

TL;DR

UK startup NewOrbit raised an oversubscribed $18.5M Series A to build the first commercial satellite for very low Earth orbit (200-300km), a band kept empty for 60 years by drag, atomic oxygen, and physics. First launch is planned for 2028.

Between commercial aircraft at 10km and conventional satellites at 500km lies a band of near-Earth space that has never been used commercially. Very low Earth orbit, or VLEO, sits at 200 to 300km, an altitude historically reserved for spy satellites and the International Space Station. Reading-based NewOrbit announced on Monday an oversubscribed $18.5 million Series A to become the first company to fly commercial payloads there.

The round was led by Voyager Ventures, which manages $475 million across three funds, with angel investors including David Kirk, Nvidia’s former chief scientist, and Laurence Leuschner, former CEO of European mobility unicorn TIER Mobility. Existing backers Atlantic.vc, Lifeline Ventures, LGF, and Illusian also participated.

Why VLEO has been off limits

Three forces have kept VLEO commercially unviable since the dawn of the space age. Atmospheric drag at these altitudes pulls spacecraft back to Earth within weeks or months. Atomic oxygen, which makes up roughly 96% of the atmosphere at this altitude, corrodes surfaces and degrades optical sensors, thermal coatings, and solar cells. Aerodynamic torques destabilise orientation, making it difficult to point instruments accurately.

The 💜 of EU tech

The latest rumblings from the EU tech scene, a story from our wise ol' founder Boris, and some questionable AI art. It's free, every week, in your inbox. Sign up now!

NewOrbit says it has built purpose-engineered satellites equipped with an in-house propulsion system to withstand these conditions and operate reliably in VLEO for up to five years. The company’s NEO-1 satellite is designed to maintain altitude through continuous thruster boosts while resisting the corrosive environment that has destroyed previous hardware within months.

The commercial logic

The pitch is straightforward: the closer to Earth you fly, the better you can see and the faster you can transmit data, at dramatically lower cost. NewOrbit claims its VLEO position will deliver the highest quality satellite imagery available at 20 times less than the cost of conventional satellites. It also says the proximity enables faster data speeds for communications, potentially unlocking 5G direct-to-device connectivity from space and live HD video, capabilities that are not possible from standard orbital altitudes.

Those are company claims, and they are ambitious. The 20x cost reduction and the five-year operational lifespan in a corrosive environment have not been independently validated. NewOrbit’s first commercial satellite is not scheduled to launch until 2028. No commercial payload has ever flown at these altitudes.

The manufacturing plan

The Series A will fund construction of NewOrbit’s NEO Production Complex, scheduled to open in 2027. The facility will integrate the company’s first commercial satellite for the 2028 launch, then scale from an initial capacity of 10 satellites a year to several a week at full pace. At full operation, the company says it would be Europe’s largest dedicated VLEO production facility.

The team includes engineers recruited from SpaceX, NASA JPL, Tesla, Airbus, ESA, and Formula 1. The advisory board features Jean-Jacques Dordain, who served as Director General of the European Space Agency from 2003 to 2015, and Sir Chris Deverell, former Commander of UK Joint Forces.

Competition and context

NewOrbit is not alone in targeting VLEO. Univity, another European startup, raised $32 million in a Series A earlier this year to fund VLEO 5G demonstrator satellites. ESA has been studying VLEO missions for years and published research outlining the benefits of the regime for Earth observation. The UK government’s UKTIN network has identified VLEO as a growth market. But no company has yet flown a commercial satellite below 300km and kept it there.

“For sixty years, VLEO has been treated as too hostile an environment for commercial satellites,” said Anatolii Papulov, NewOrbit’s CEO and co-founder. “Today, no one in the industry has a reliable, affordable, and fast way to fly payloads in very-low Earth orbit. We built our NEO-1 satellite to do exactly that.”

The 2028 launch will be the test. If NEO-1 survives the drag, the atomic oxygen, and the torques long enough to prove the commercial case, NewOrbit will have opened a new layer of the space economy from a factory in the Thames Valley. If it does not, $18.5 million will have bought an expensive physics lesson. VLEO has been humbling spacecraft for six decades. The question is whether NewOrbit’s engineering is good enough to change that.