Luxembourg’s Exobiosphere has been selected by ESA to deliver a full end-to-end microgravity research service aboard Vast’s Haven-1 commercial space station.
The momentum keeps building for Luxembourg space biotech startup Exobiosphere. Following a $1M Draper investment and a $2M fundraise, the company has now secured a contract from the European Space Agency (ESA) to design, qualify, and operate an automated biology platform in low-Earth orbit — its Orbital High-Throughput Screener (OHTS) — aboard Vast’s Haven-1, set to become the world’s first commercial space station upon its 2027 launch.
“This contract marks a significant step in making microgravity a practical and accessible resource for biomedical research in Europe.”
Kyle Acierno, CEO of Exobiosphere
Under the contract, Exobiosphere will handle the full pipeline: science selection, hardware qualification, mission preparation, in-orbit experiment execution, and data return to Earth-based research teams. At its core, the OHTS can run over 2,000 automated experiments per mission — no crew intervention required.
“For the first time, research teams across Europe would be able to run high-throughput biology in orbit the same way they run it on the bench,” said CEO Kyle Acierno. Science proposals will be open to European academic and industry teams via ESA’s OSIP platform starting end of May, with key milestones running through mid-2028.
