Rendering of an EnduroSat and Space Shield mission. Photo: EnduroSat

EnduroSat and Shield Space have joined a strategic partnership to jointly operate space defense missions, EnduroSat said on April 8. The companies’ combined technologies could allow them to deliver on-orbit missions in nine months, it said.

“Defense customers require fast, dependable access to operational space capability,” EnduroSat founder and CEO Raycho Raychev said. “By combining Shield Space’s mission autonomy and effectors with EnduroSat’s fixed‑cost space services and software-flexible satellite platforms, we are enabling customers to deploy real counter‑threat missions in months — not years.”

Bulgaria-based EnduroSat is an end-to-end satellite services provider, and United Kingdom-based Shield Space produces an autonomous guidance system for commercial satellite platforms. Their product approach integrates launch, software, and operations services, which expedites the timeline from contract signature to deployment, EnduroSat said.

EnduroSat noted that the partnership is all-European and establishes a model for rapidly deployable sovereign defense capabilities.

The companies also announced a joint mission, titled Broadsword, set to launch in the second quarter of 2027. Broadsword is meant to demonstrate a full rendezvous and proximity operations (RPO) sequence on autonomous chaser spacecraft against a co-deployed target.

EnduroSat said the mission will demonstrate how the two companies’ architectures could execute defense missions at a lower cost than traditional competitors’.

Afterwards, the two companies will develop a platform called Project Nexus, combining EnduroSat’s 200 kg to 500 kg-class cubesat platform with Shield Space’s mission systems. EnduroSat called it a mothership-based space control system for autonomous interceptor spacecraft in orbit. Project Nexus is designed to be a command, deployment, and support node for multiple spacecraft.

“Cheap autonomous drones have changed the tempo of warfare in Ukraine,” Shield Space co-founder and CEO Graeme Ritchie said. “Space will experience the same acceleration, where machines must sense, decide and maneuver faster than human command chains allow. Our partnership brings together the spacecraft, autonomy, and mission architecture needed to make that possible.”