The company's roots go back to Soviet space technology. The Kurs rendezvous system was developed in the 1980s in the USSR, including by Kyiv specialists at the Kyiv Radio Plant. According to InVenture, it has been used for more than 300 dockings of Soyuz and Progress spacecraft with the Mir station and the International Space Station. After the annexation of Crimea in 2014, supplies of Kurs to Russia ceased, and the developers began looking for new products based on this heritage.
One of those who led this search was Volodymyr Usov. He was born in Odesa, graduated from Odesa National Maritime University, and in 2020 headed the State Space Agency of Ukraine. That same year, the country passed a law on private space companies. Usov is a co-founder and CEO of Kurs Orbital, a member of the International Academy of Astronautics, and lives in Turin. According to him, the company's birth is linked to Vadym Vasyliev.
The exact founding date depends on what counts as the start. The Ukrainian patent application was filed on 4 January 2022. According to several publications, the Italian company was registered in 2022, and its office appeared in Turin, while development remained in Kyiv. Russia's invasion in February 2022 forced some investors to withdraw from the project, and the new team had to rebuild relationships with European programmes from scratch.
Recognition and accelerators
The first notable result was Start Cup Piemonte Valle d'Aosta 2022. On 8 November 2022, the project took first place, received 10,000 euros and the Jacobacci Silver prize. In 2023, the team completed the Seraphim Space Camp and SpaceFounders accelerators, took part in several competitions of the Italian Space Agency ASI, and from January to March 2023 completed the pre-accelerator of the Saudi Space Commission, run by Techstars.
The ESA BIC Turin programme is run by I3P with technical support from the Polytechnic University of Turin and the LINKS Foundation, and together with the European Space Agency and ASI it supports early-stage space projects. It was in this programme that Kurs Orbital became one of the first companies. The 2024 results were assessed on two criteria: two-year growth and the amount of investment raised.
Seed round and ARCap
In March 2024, the company closed a seed round of 3.7 million euros, equivalent to about 4 million dollars. OTB Ventures was the lead investor; the round included Credo, Galaxia, linked to CDP VC and Obloo, PiemonteNext, backed by CDP VC and Finpiemonte, as well as In-Q-Tel and Inovo. At the time of the round, the team numbered 11 people.
The company's main product, the ARCap module, performs rendezvous, approach, docking and capture manoeuvres, including with non-cooperative targets, that is, with spacecraft not designed for such operations. In a November 2022 interview with AstroSpace, it was said that the module was 50–60 percent ready and the flight was planned for 2024. The timeline has slipped: in March 2024, the end of 2025 was mentioned, and there are still no confirmed launch dates in open sources.
At the ceremony in Turin, I3P President Giuseppe Scellato, also a professor at the Polytechnic University of Turin and coordinator of ESA BIC Turin, was given the floor.
“Kurs Orbital has completed an outstanding entrepreneurial journey,” said I3P President Giuseppe Scellato.
In response, Volodymyr Usov thanked the incubator: “Now that we are starting to walk on our own, we want to sincerely thank the entire incubator team.”
What happened next
The title was awarded in I3P's 25th anniversary year, and for the incubator it is the first award of its kind. On 5 December 2024, twelve days before the ceremony, the company was included in the StartupItalia 100 list. The team's immediate plans remain the development of ARCap and the search for further investment, while the stated flight date for the module is still linked to the end of 2025.
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