Elon Musk has made it clear. He’s going to inhabit Mars. But the first natural step, he says, will be the moon. We’ve reported on the moon base station. NASA knows that plants can grow on the moon. And countries like China and Russia have declared they will build cities there too using nuclear power. Stepping up to democratize the moon is an EU-funded company, Deep Space Energy, which has just raised more than $1 million USD as a seed fund to help it create energy generators on the moon. It’s a bid to strengthen the European sovereign space and defense industry and power Moon surface exploration.

The researchers are from Latvia: “Our technology, which has already been validated in the laboratory, has several applications across the defence and space sectors.

“First, we’re developing an auxiliary energy source to enhance the resilience of strategic satellites. It provides the redundancy of satellite power systems by supplying backup power that does not depend on solar energy, making it crucial for high-value military reconnaissance assets,” says Mihails Ščepanskis, founder and CEO of the company.

Based in Riga, the company is developing a radioisotopic generator toward commercialisation. The electricity comes from nuclear decay — a nuclear process. And the equipment does not include a nuclear reactor which could explode.

The funding was made up of its €350k pre-Seed round led by Outlast Fund and Linas Sargautis, an angel investor and a former co-founder of NanoAvionics. The company also secured additional €580k in public contracts and grants by the European Space Agency (ESA), NATO DIANA, and the Latvian government. It’s not a huge sum of money for such an ambitious project but it’s a start.

European and American military and space technologies are what leads to new inventions in medicine, ecology and renewable energy.

Military spy satellites evolved into Earth-monitoring satellites that now track deforestation (Amazon, Congo), (see MIT using AI and imaging for trees in cities) they can monitor methane leaks and pollution; and satellites predict droughts and crop failures.

Military thermal imaging using infrared vision is now used to detect inflammation and vascular disease, it can screen for breast cancer and detect fevers at airports.

In the 2025–2026 period, EU-Startups has reported substantial capital flows into the European SpaceTech sector, primarily at Seed and Series A stage.

Germany’s Reflex Aerospace secured €50 million to scale sovereign satellite platforms, while France’s Infinite Orbits raised €40 million to expand in-orbit servicing capabilities. Also in France, Look Up attracted €50 million to grow its radar-based space surveillance network, and UNIVITY secured €31 million to accelerate development of a space-based 5G constellation.

In Germany, Marble Imaging raised €5.3 million to scale its very high resolution Earth observation satellites ahead of launch, while Spain’s Kreios Space secured €8 million to advance propulsion systems for very low Earth orbit. Italy’s Astradyne raised €2 million to commercialise ultralight solar panels, and Spain’s Orbital Paradigm closed a €1.5 million pre-Seed round to develop reusable space capsules.

Collectively, these rounds represent approximately €187 million in disclosed funding moving into European SpaceTech across adjacent segments including satellite infrastructure, propulsion, communications, servicing and observation.

Deep Space Energy says it will put a focus on energy resilience for satellites and lunar missions rather than platform deployment.

“As Europe is trying to become more independent, it is imperative to produce satellites with advanced capabilities on our own. Our technology provides an auxiliary energy source for satellites, which makes them more resilient to non-kinetic attacks and malfunctions,” Mihails adds.

Founded in 2022, Deep Space Energy is developing a new radioisotope power generator for space that uses the heat produced by the nuclear self-decay of radioisotopes – materials extractable from waste of commercial nuclear reactors.

The product aims for applications in deep space science missions, lunar surface missions and high-value defense satellites. Their solution converts that heat into electric power, requiring 5 times less radioisotope fuel than a thermo-electric generator (RTG), currently used in space.

The company highlighted that its radioisotope-based energy generator is not designed for any kind of weapons. It will target high-value, dual-use satellites to increase their resilience and operational reliability. The primary focus is on satellites operating in Medium Earth Orbit (MEO), Geostationary Orbit (GEO) and Highly Elliptical Orbit (HEO), which are all critical for modern military reconnaissance and early-warning systems.

These satellites support a range of defence functions, from synthetic aperture radar (SAR)
satellites for detecting troop concentrations through clouds and foliage, to signal intelligence for intercepting communications and radio transmissions, as well as missile-launch detection, which is essential for anti-missile defense systems.

Egita Poļanska, partner at the lead investor Outlast Fund, shares: “Space energy tech has been stuck with certain limitations for decades, but we’re finally seeing the pieces come together for a real breakthrough – new materials, smarter power systems, and actual commercial demand for lunar operations.

“Deep Space Energy is building the infrastructure that will literally power the next chapter of space exploration and industry. As Europe ramps up its space ambitions, we need our own companies to lead in these foundational technologies. We’re thrilled to back this team and honestly pretty excited to have an actual moonshot in our portfolio, in the most literal sense possible.”

In the long term, the company aims to focus on the Moon economy. The radioisotope power generator looks to address critical energy challenges in the next phase of lunar exploration, including NASA and ESA’s Artemis, Argonaut and lunar rover programs, as well as the Moon Village framework led by the Moon Village Association. In particular, the technology is designed to support lunar night survival and operations in permanently shadowed regions, enabling extended scouting and prospecting missions.

On the Moon, where the temperatures at night drop below 150 degrees Celsius, and nights last for roughly 354 hours, moonrovers can’t rely on solar power.

The company’s technology requires approximately 2kg of Americium-241 fuel to generate 50W of power for a lunar rover, compared with around 10kg of radioisotope material needed by legacy RTG systems for comparable output. Given current projections that Americium-241 production capacity will reach around 10kg per year by the mid-2030s, this efficiency could enable lunar exploration missions to begin more than five years earlier and at up to five times the mission volume.

According to Ščepanskis, the company’s technology can significantly enhance the economics of moon rover missions by enabling them to last multiple day-night cycles up to a few years. The sole expenses of bringing payload to the Moon cost up to a million euros per kilogram; thus, by enhancing the lifetime of the rovers, the company helps to save hundreds of millions.

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A space elevator, also called a space bridge, star ladder, or orbital lift, is a proposed type of planet-to-space transportation system, often depicted in science fiction. The main component of a space elevator would be a cable anchored to the surface and extending into space.

Futuristic Japan is planning one for the year 2050. Obayashi Corporation aims to connect Earth to space with an 80,000 mile cable made from carbon nanotubes (CNTs) allowing 30 passengers to be launched into space at about 150mph, getting them to a space station in about a week.

The discovery of CNTs by a Japanese engineer in 1991 has pushed this vision forward, with potential launches of the construction project to begin as early as next year. Japan is not the first to come up with the idea of a space elevator.

In 1895, Konstantin Tsiolkovsky proposed to build a space elevator that could reach from Earth into space; it never got off the ground, but in 1957 another Russian – Yuri Artsutanov – came up with a more plausible idea. It wasn’t built either, but he had a chance to judge a team of Israeli students who were tackling the concept anew.

In Japan, the the space elevator construction would be multi-stage process with materials transported via rocket to low Earth orbit where a spaceship will use electric propulsion to ascend to geostationary Earth orbit.

One of the significant advantages of the space elevator, says the Obayashi Corporation is its cost-effectiveness and sustainability. Traditional rocket launches are expensive and polluting. Each launch could cost just a few thousand dollars, making space access more affordable and frequent. This project aligns with Japan’s goals for carbon neutrality by 2050, providing a greener alternative to current space travel technologies​.

Maybe they can figure out a way to get space junk out of orbit at the same time.

Obayashi Corporation is one of five major Japanese construction companies along with Shimizu Corporation, Takenaka Corporation, Kajima Corporation, and Taisei Corporation. It is listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange and is one of the Nikkei 225 corporations. Its headquarters are in Minato, Tokyo.

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With a starting budget exceeding  $5 billion USD, the newly hatched government agency aims to send the first Arab spaceship to Mars by 2021. How’s that jibe with the fatwa against Mars space travel? The UAE probe will be unmanned, sidestepping the “suicide mission” tag of the Netherlands-based Mars One program.

The agency intends to kick-start growth in Arab technology and aerospace industries, with expected positive knock-on to the regional economy.  It also positions the UAE as one of only nine countries with a Mars space program.

A press release stated,” The more than 60 million kelometer (sic) journey to Mars will mark UAE out as one of few countries with space programs to explore the Red Planet. Our region is a cradle of great civilizations. Given the right tools, Arabs, once again, can deliver new scientific contributions to humanity.”

The announcement was made via the sheikh’s Facebook page (link here) and has so far attracted nearly 1000 comments ranging from enthusiastic support to harsh criticism.

“So these Arabs can spend so much money on such things(they’ve been given so much wealth) and can’t help our brothers and sisters in Palestine, Syria, Burma etc?”, opined one of the sheikh’s followers. Many of the naysayers point to the increasing humanitarian crises in Syria, Iraq and Palestine as better targets for UAE investment. 

Others stick to classic Facebook wise-guy-isms such as the commenter who said, “You’re sending Arabs to space, yet you can’t spell kilometers'”.

The forward-thinking sheikh said, “We chose the epic challenge of reaching Mars because epic challenges inspire us and motivate us. The moment we stop taking on such challenges is the moment we stop moving forward.”

In 2011, he established the first ever Global Energy Forum in Dubai, and he championed development of the UAE’s renewable energy sector.  But those efforts hardly mitigate the environmental irresponsibility of Emirates’ out-sized (earthbound) development schemes that place value on world-record-breaking luxury over world-preserving rationalism.

Will space exploration be a new arena for the Gulf to demonstrate environmental and technological leadership? Or is it just another paragraph in a future World Records annual?

Image of Mars from Shutterstock

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