The ‘low cost’ satellite guru that will save the earth: “What if we had had immediate information in the Dana?”

The idea was around him since the race began. At 19, Jordá convinced the Vice Chancellor of the Polytechnic University of Catalonia to set up a small laboratory in the basement and fill it with rockets. In third career his professor José Mariano, who smelled talent, gave him a job in his Azero2infinity space tourism company. At the end of aeronautical engineering he signed him Airbus Defense & Space as he attended a sepi scholarship that put him in the business orbit: he was studying the MBA while riding his head business plan, Open Cosmos.

“Why not make these smaller, more agile and economical satellites so that not only great technology companies can be allowed?” The “lack of appetite” business in Spain forced him to make his bags and go to the United Kingdom, where he found less barriers and financing.

«I went very much. Going to a place where you understand you, understand the entrepreneurial culture and invest was a matter of life and death. Ten years ago, the investment in Start Up Spain like the one I had in mind was very high risk and looked like something extraterrestrial. I was a 25 -year -old kid who wanted to make satellites! ”He exclaims.

With the right savings to ‘survive’ six months he landed in London in 2015. “I went to Indiana Jones and went well,” he advances. He obtained a first contract of the European Space Agency to make tired (satellite demonstrators). They bought 500 units – then 200 more – and that small contract of just over 50,000 euros allowed him to stretch the stay and continue dreaming.

The dream was fulfilled two months later. The European Commission had a project that consisted of launching 50 small satellites, and Jordá proposed to be a “back up”: he would design the satellite, he would deliver it and if he met all the needs, the European Commission would fly it. “All that was worth a lot of money, with which they would pay that part, and I pledged to deliver the rest as a catalyst of my business model (design, manufacture and operate satellites from beginning to end),” he explains nervous.

They selected him and Jordá got “like crazy” to sign all the talent he needed. «I managed to convince many university friends who worked in Airbus and in ESA to leave these gold positions to start Open Cosmos with me”.

Only six months later, they delivered the satellite passing all the tests. It was the first of the entire program in nine years that was delivered successfully. «They threw it to us and there We planted a flag In a way, ”he highlights proudly on that milestone that, although monetarily it was not lucrative, opened the doors of heaven to Open Cosmos because it was seen that those kids fulfilled and did well.

Meteoric expansion

A decade after that beginning, Open Cosmos is the Leading company in Europe of small satellite missions. It has 150 employees, closed contracts worth 120 million euros in 2024, and has been generating benefits for four years. It has four factories – Barcelona, ​​Oxford, Athens and Coimbra – and several offices, one of them in Mallorca. Now it is Jordá who recruits talent and makes Spanish brains not escape as he touched him (although on his way back).

Sorry for daring, who buys a satellite?

“Mainly governments and telecommunications, energy … governments … governments use them to monitor their natural resources, territory management, security, climate, energy transition …”, replies a convincing Rafael Jordá capable of ‘selling’ another satellite to the journalist.

Open to ABC the doors of its headquarters in Palma, unmistakable for its yellow logo. It is Monday and a team of five people works in its Mallorcan office located in the Parc Bit of Palma, known as the Balearic Silicon Valley, where the most designed technological innovation companies are concentrated.

«We have the ability to design and manufacture satellites with their peculiarities. Other companies do a satellite and repeat it, ”says this guru about the differential aspect of Open Cosmos, since” there are not many companies in the world that can do this throughout the entire value chain and with all kinds of satellites , both of the observation of the earth, of telecommunications, of science or of those that require us ».

His ‘low cost’ satellites They have a useful life between three and five years -“Depending on the height at which it is thrown”-, and do not generate space garbage: “When they end” they resent the atmosphere and disintegrate completely. ” They measure each corner of the earth with several sensors and put all that information available to people to be able to make climatic and economically sustainable decisions. Let’s say, without exaggeration, that they can save the planet.

«They are a measurement instrument which offers information in a scientific, real way. If you have no data, you are not effective and you cannot answer, ”says Jordá, emphasizing the importance of good use of that data. “Technology never gives you the final solution to everything, and that it is human decisions that really end up moving the balance.”

The logos of the ten satellites currently the company has in orbit are hung on the palm office wall. Open Cosmos has sold 40 and is manufacturing another 29. “But these ten are the entire missions, the satellites purely made by us, operated and launched,” the company’s CEO proudly details, which already prepares the eleventh sticker for the Balearic satellite that will be presented on February 26 in Palma.

In total, two have been launched for the Generalitat de Catalunya (there are two more under construction), one for the Agricultural and Fishing Management Agency of Andalusia and another for the Astrophysical Institute of the Canary Islands, plus the Balearic, which is in preparation. “The rest are from the United Kingdom, the European Space Agency for Paneuropeos projects, Portugal (four hired), in Greece we won a 60 million contract to make seven … I am forgetting some sure …”.

They are designed, launched and then what?

«Open Orbyt is like having a server but up there in orbit. I design it to you, I give it to you and if you want it, I will work it. The satellite is yours and all the data are yours, ”summarizes its star product. But the needs are varied and also offers Open Constellation, which consists of contributing a satellite to the constellation and, in turn, benefit from data from other satellites that pass through their region of interest.

Another available product is Data Cosmos, a platform where it integrates all the Open constellation data and all harmonized public satellite data and are made available to customers. “It is an effective way to get many data and above all that tools are developed that allow you to better address the final challenges of users.”

Rafael Jordá was awarded the Princess of Girona 2023 award

The price is light years from any of Airbus’s satellites: 3 to 8 million compared to 200 or 300 million. They are not the same, but “the innovation of Open Cosmos sensors is so high that for many cases of use they are more than enough,” he claims the ‘brain’ of the company.

Why spend four million on satellites that last four years?

Jordá twists his mouth and answers with another relentless question. «The data that this type of satellites collect have a potential to save hundreds of millions. I do not like to use examples, but imagine that we would have had satellite information of what was happening when the DANA happened in Valencia and that this information was public and immediately access to everyone, and that during the two weeks after the catastrophe there would be There have been maps, clear cartography of where to enter the machinery, from where to act, and that this information was to the access of citizens and governments. What are four million if you think about it from that perspective?