ORiS

ORiS wants to deliver power between spacecraft by laser. A transmitter satellite aims its beam at the solar arrays a client satellite already carries, which convert laser light much as they convert sunlight, so the receiving end needs no new hardware. The pitch is energy on demand: power through eclipse, extra watts for a radar or computing burst, and life extension for satellites whose own arrays have degraded.

The founders are four Politecnico di Torino engineers who started it as a student project in 2022 and incorporated in early 2024. Their argument is that satellites are increasingly limited by power rather than mass, and that if any satellite is already a receiver, delivered energy can be sold like a commodity rather than engineered per mission.

Everything so far is on the ground. The LOONA testbed has beamed power to a drone hovering beyond a hundred metres, and a feasibility study with Thales Alenia Space looked at powering lunar rovers. The first space demonstration, planned with Dcubed for 2027, spans about ten metres, which will test conversion and safety rather than the kilometre-scale pointing the business actually requires. No wavelength, beam power or end-to-end efficiency figures have been published, and there is no paying customer yet. The physics is unforgiving, since every step from electricity to laser to distant panel and back loses energy, and nobody anywhere has closed that loop commercially in orbit.