Over the last ten years, Sener Poland has successfully completed 20 key projects and provided mechanisms for groundbreaking international missions, such as Euclid, JUICE and ExoMars. She developed a network of cooperation covering over 80 Polish enterprises and introduced some of them to the industry. Today, the company summarizes a decade of activity in the space sector and announces plans for the coming years.
As part of an international engineering group, Sener Poland was established in 2006. Since 2012, the company's activity has been focused exclusively on space engineering, in particular the production of mechanisms for space applications and equipment for ground support and satellite assembly. Since then, the company's team has been constantly developing its competences and business ecosystem to implement more and more ambitious and wide-ranging projects, the portfolio of which already includes over 20.
Participation in the most important space projects in recent years
From the very beginning, the company, also in cooperation with other institutions and the parent company Sener Aeroespacial, obtained contracts for the implementation of mechanisms for key projects of the European Space Agency.
One of the first implemented projects involved the production and testing of a comprehensive set of thirteen mechanisms for ground equipment supporting the assembly of the Euclid satellite, which will soon begin its journey into space to create a map of the structure of the Universe.
In the following years, Sener Poland also took part in the JUICE and ATHENA missions, which are the two largest ESA projects. It supplied them with devices supporting the transport and assembly of solar panels of the JUICE satellite and two types of support and release mechanisms for the mirror of the ATHENA telescope.
The next projects concerned, among others, the implementation of the electrical and mechanical "umbilical cord" connecting the rover with the lander as part of the currently suspended ExoMars mission, the development of devices for the assembly of the Biomass satellite of the mission monitoring the state of forestation of the Earth, and the creation of a number of mechanisms supporting the assembly, transport and protection of mirrors of the world's largest ELT telescope.
In addition to participating in scientific missions, the Polish Sener has also won commercial contracts, such as the contract signed in 2021 for the serial production of OneSat mechanisms or the delivery of a hard capture system for the IBDM docking system, which in the future will ensure the safety of astronauts passing between the space station and the ship.
Today, the company is applying for more and more ambitious projects. The first contracts of Sener Poland concerned single components and mechanisms. Thanks to the constant building of competences, the search for new challenges and the experience of the company, today we deliver entire systems, such as the Medium Gain Antenna created for the Ariel mission in cooperation with Sener Aeroespacial. We are also more and more often the leader of a significant part of the project, as was the case with the PROBA-3 mission, which allows us to assume that in the coming years we will take on more and more responsibility - indicates Beatriz Perez, general director of Sener Poland.
Sener's main goal for the coming years is to strengthen its position as a key supplier of space mechanisms in Poland, and in particular to continue development work on its flagship products.
Among them are deployment mechanisms and hold-down release mechanisms, which have found their application in projects, i.e. PROBA-3, or ELT, among others. In addition, Sener Poland plans to tighten cooperation with Polish institutions, which are extremely effective partnerships in large projects, as demonstrated by the LISA or ARIEL missions.
Involvement in the business development of the sector
In addition to the implementation of engineering projects, the most important pillars of the company's activity include the development of the business ecosystem throughout the country - the number of companies with which Sener Poland cooperates has increased from 50 in 2017 to over 80 in 2022. These are companies from various industries that, thanks to cooperation with Sener, gain access to work in the sector.
Procedures for space projects, the specificity of documentation or the ability to meet the requirements set by space entities - all this is knowledge that we share with cooperating entities, which they can use to expand their portfolio. - emphasizes Jakub Pierzchała, business development manager, and adds: our associates are primarily small and medium-sized enterprises, so for some, knowledge of the space sector becomes an important distinguishing feature. This was the case, for example, with Aerospace Dynamic Group, once an Endevour company, which, after more than four years of cooperation with Sener, changed its profile to the space sector.
Social responsibility towards the sector
Long-term activities for the development of the Polish space sector also include involvement in building its strong staff and tightening cooperation between the business and science environments.
This strategy is implemented, among others, through internal training, participation in the "Polish Space Fellowship Program", long-term cooperation with Polish universities as well as mentoring and involvement in initiatives addressed to young adepts of the industry.
To summarize its activities in the area of positive impact on the environment, Sener Poland has been publishing a Social Impact Report since 2017. It presents the most important events from the past twelve months, reflecting the strategy of building a strong sector by the company. The latest edition of the report for 2022 is now available on the Sener Poland website.
About Sener Poland
Sener Poland started operations in 2006 and focuses on the aerospace sector, understood as defence, space engineering and aeronautics. The main area of activity of Sener Poland in the aerospace industry is mechanical engineering, including in particular the deployment mechanisms and structures of space vehicles. Other areas of the company's activity in Poland include mechanical ground assist devices (MGSE). Although little time has passed since Poland's accession to ESA in 2012, Sener Poland has become one of the important participants in the space market and has started implementing projects that it hopes will contribute to building a strong space sector in Poland. Among the important projects, it is worth mentioning the ExoMars, Proba-3, Euclid, E.Deorbit, Saocom-CS, Athena and JUICE missions.
www.group.sener