Scanway and Pixxel look beyond satellite telescopes
Scanway_SA and PixxelSpace want to develop new instruments and explore selling satellite imagery together.
Scanway is building satellite telescopes for Pixxel under an agreement signed in 2025. On 23 October, the companies announced a memorandum to take that relationship further, covering new optical instruments and joint projects in Europe and other markets.
Their existing work helps explain the opportunity. Scanway makes equipment that captures images from space, while Pixxel operates Earth-observation satellites and develops software to analyse their data. Together, they want to explore selling satellite imagery and information derived from it. For Scanway, this could bring recurring income alongside telescope sales, because customers would pay for the data rather than buying the instruments themselves.
The companies also plan to develop instruments that capture sharper images. Scanway aims to build the capability to capture images at roughly 50 centimetres per pixel from low Earth orbit by the end of 2028, with commercialisation from 2029. Sharing engineering resources and test facilities with Pixxel could help it work towards that goal. These remain development targets, rather than capabilities already available to customers.
The partnership therefore builds on a real supply contract, but today’s announcement is about future cooperation. It does not disclose another telescope order, an order value or committed revenue from the new activities.