Australian company gets $19 m series B backing, looks to commercially launch rockets in 2020

Gilmour Space Technologies has raised $19 m from companies including Main Sequence Ventures (which manages CSIRO’s Innovation Fund), Blackbird Ventures and the US-based 500 Start-ups. The company is aiming to address a bottleneck in launches for the booming nano-satellite market, catered to by about a half-dozen operators globally.

Gilmour aims to launch its 100 kg capacity Eris-100 rocket into low earth orbit in 2020, and a 400 kg rocket the year after.

“The small satellite revolution is gaining momentum globally, with thousands of small sats slated to launch into low-Earth orbits over the next five years,” founder Adam Gilmour told the AFR.

Elsewhere Main Sequence told The Australian this would allow the country to focus on more than just downstream applications in space.

Plenty of Australians looking to get cubesats into space, but price and availability make it difficult. This news follows venture backing for Fleet Space

Technologies and Myriota totalling over $20 million. Not sure of where they’ll launch from, but Gilmour plans a pilot suborbital trial in November, delayed due to confusion over whether CASA or the new space agency needed to give approval.

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