Exotrail, a French company specialising in mobility solutions for satellites, has become in a few years one of the leaders in European NewSpace. Today, the company is organising the redeployment of its governing bodies to support its new phase of expansion. As such, Jean-Luc Maria, co-founder and former CTO, succeeds David Henri as Chairman and CEO. David Henri takes on the functions of co-founder & Chief Product Officer in charge of the product marketing and strategy. Nicolas Heitz and Paul Lascombes, both also co-founders of Exotrail, remain respectively COO and Chief Scientist. Sébastien Duménil, completes the Executive Committee of Exotrail as Chief Commercial Officer.
Founded in 2017, Exotrail has seen its growth and success accelerate over the past 18 months. The company has become the first in the world to successfully demonstrate a Hall technology propulsion system on a satellite weighing less than 100kg, also operated thanks to the ExoOPS™ software it is developing, it has raised more than €20 million and signed numerous contracts with US, European, and Asian actors. One of their propulsion systems will fly around the Moon in 2022, on an US satellite built by York Space Systems for Intuitive Machines.
The company is thinking even bigger: Exotrail has doubled the size of its premises in Massy and Toulouse, it is preparing to increase its thruster production capacity (ExoMG™) to more than a hundred per year from 2022, it will launch new cloud satellite operations software (ExoOPS™ - Operations) on the market in October, and make investments to become a European leader in space mobility thanks to its in-orbit service vehicle (SpaceVan™) which will fly at the end of 2023. To do so, the company has doubled its teams since January 2021 and now has 50 employees, and it is now reorganising its governance bodies to support this new growth.
“In four years, Exotrail has become a key player in European space. We already have more than ten customers in France, Europe, Asia and the USA. By the end of the year, we will have five in-flight missions. We did this in such a short time while remaining true to ourselves and to our values: action, quality and most importantly today, the team at the centre of the game. This reorganisation demonstrates our agility to support the company at every phase of his life. Our next development steps are focused on in-orbit service, a major issue for the future of space, while continuing to ramp up our historic products," explains Jean-Luc Maria, Chairman and CEO of Exotrail.
“We have demonstrated over the past four years our agility and our ability to execute. Today our ExoMG™ systems and ExoOPS™ software are entering many markets to enable our customers to reduce their launch costs, improve performance and reduce space pollution. Our adventure is that of a team, we prove it even today by reorganising ourselves to put our qualities where they will make the difference," adds David Henri, Chief Product Officer.