INSIGHTS / News

In partnership with the UK Space Agency, SETsquared is helping foster new innovations in space-related technologies, by providing entrepreneurship programmes and business support to entrepreneurs and fledgling businesses in this area.

Here’s an overview of the latest companies to join the hub, taking the total number of space companies now supported to 11.

Buzzard Cameras

Started by University of Southampton graduate, Oliver Drew, Buzzard Cameras’ is developing a lightweight multispectral camera. The camera is compatible with the European Space Agency’s Sentinel-2 satellites and designed to be mounted on any drone platform. Customers who purchase a Buzzard multispectral camera have access to the Buzzard web portal. Here the raw camera images are calibrated and processed into actionable maps. The growing library of Sentinel-2 satellite imagery can also be accessed through the web portal. The ability to utilise both drone and satellite imagery provides the user with greater accuracy and support in their analysis/decision making.

Applications for this include environmental research and precision agriculture, for example mapping crop health variability during the growing season, and taking appropriate action.

Oliver says: “Following my masters degree at the University of Southampton I was looking at ways to commercialise my research into remote sensing and discovered SETsquared’s entrepreneurship programme. Whilst I have the technical background to develop the product I had limited business knowledge, so the training course was perfect giving me the basics and now I can access to ongoing support from SETsquared.”

My Microgravity

My Microgravity offers a service to scientific researchers in the pharmaceutical, biotech, medical and cosmetic industries, which enables them to use the microgravity environment in their research. Microgravity is unique in that it can, for example, accelerate ageing processes. It is therefore a very useful environment to test medical research into for example bone loss and muscular atrophy. Other important research fields which can benefit from microgravity are stem cell research, 3D cell culture or research on tumor cells.

Founder Antoine Joly-Battaglini came into contact with SETsquared at the Space Innovation Congress, winning the pitching competition that SETsquared ran and the company has since taken part in the entrepreneurship programme.

Antoine says: “The entrepreneurship programme came at exactly the right time for us. It helped us structure our thinking and put down on paper what our main challenges and next steps are. There is a definite need from the scientific community for our services and now we are working on developing our commercial offering.”