The winning start-up of the Pitch Competition of NSE New Space Economy Expoforum, organized with the technical support of the Italian Space Agency (ASI), is Astradyne, an Italian innovative company founded in 2021 in Bari that has created a new technology to combine textiles with electronics to develop deployable, lightweight and efficient structures for use on satellites.
The competition, moderated by journalist Mariapia Ebreo, took place on the afternoon of December 17, 2024 in Rome as part of the sixth edition of NSE, the annual event created in 2019 to tell the challenges and prospects of the New Space Economy.
“It is an honor to receive this award. These awards, for start-ups at our stage of development, are extremely important and will help us in the realization of this disruptive product,” commented Davide Vittori, a 28-year-old engineer and one of the founders of the winning start-up, who was honored on stage by Augusto Cramarossa, Head of ASI's Strategic Coordination Office.
Astradyne, which was awarded a prize of €10,000, was competing with the other start-ups that were selected to join the final round: REA Space, Evolunar, Ecosmic, Fluid Wire Robotics, Space V, Latitudo 40, Titan4, Celeste, and Involve Space. The first seven of these ten finalists are start-ups incubated in I3P, the Incubator of Politecnico di Torino, and among them the first six are part of ESA BIC Turin, the incubation program for new companies in the space sector.
In the Pitch Competition, each of the young companies had the opportunity to present their project to the Evaluation Panel, composed of Matteo Coletta (Head of Sector - Study Centre & New Space Economy, ASI), Tanya Scalia (Technology Development & Space Design Office, ASI), Silvia Ciccarelli (Responsible for Industrial Internationalization, International Affairs Directorate, ASI), Guido Baraglia (Head of Space Economy EMEA, AWS), Roberto Cossu (Commercialization Officer & Scale Up Country Manager for Italy, ESA), Maria Cristina Lupi (Head of product policy and open innovation, Telespazio), Alessandro Senzameno (Innovation development, NSE Expoforum - Fiera Roma).
As part of the event, an additional prize of 100,000 euros in credits to be used on Amazon Web Services platforms was awarded, thanks to the partnership between NSE and AWS, to REA Space, a company founded in 2022 and committed to developing suits for astronauts whose technology can be transferred to other sectors, including the medical and sports fields, with a focus on rehabilitation. “We are honored to award a company like this,” commented Guido Baraglia for AWS Amazon Web Services.
“The award gratifies us in a field, that of human spaceflight, which in Italy in recent times is growing and has a very strong potential for technology transfer. Through our research activities we are helping to strengthen it, also with the goal of contributing to the development of the Apulian technology hub,” commented Eleonora Zanus, a 33-year-old engineer who is in charge of product development at REA Space.
The event attracted great participation: the applications, from different regions of Italy and abroad, all of which were of a high standard and from which emerged a strong interest in technological innovation and environmental sustainability, were subjected to an initial selection, which identified the 35 start-ups from which the 10 finalists were selected.
NSE 2024, a stage for innovation and the exploration of revolutionary ideas and new technologies, focused on engaging the younger generation. Thanks to the Career Opportunity initiative, about a hundred recent graduates and young professionals had the opportunity to meet directly at the fair with HR recruiting managers from Avio, Telespazio and Thales Alenia Space.
The event was organized by Fiera di Roma in collaboration with the Italian Space Agency, under the patronage of the Ministry of Business and Made in Italy, the Ministry of Defense, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and International Cooperation, INGV, ENEA, INAF and the Order of Engineers of the Province of Rome, and with the support of the Lazio Region and the Chamber of Commerce of Rome.
