Blackswan Space's RPO Kit Aims to Dock a Satellite With Millimeter Precision

The first time you see it, the interface looks like a video game. A satellite, rendered in clean white wireframe, drifts against the black of a simulated orbit. Your task is to guide it toward a tumbling piece of space debris, matching its spin, closing the distance, and aligning a robotic arm for capture. The controls are not a joystick but a series of numerical inputs for thrust and attitude. The margin for error is less than the width of a pencil lead. This is not a game, but a digital twin of a multi-million dollar mission, running inside Blackswan Space’s Mission Design Simulator. The Vilnius-based startup is betting that the companies building the next generation of orbital mechanics,for refueling, repair, and debris removal,will want to practice their moves in a sandbox before committing hardware to the void.

Founded in 2019 by Marius Klimavičius, Blackswan Space began as a software project focused on simulating complex, autonomous satellite missions [SpaceNews, September 2026]. The core insight was straightforward: as satellites become more capable and missions more ambitious, the cost of a software bug or a flawed maneuver sequence is catastrophic. Their flagship product, the Mission Design Simulator (MDS), functions as a digital twin, allowing engineers to model everything from simple orbital transfers to the intricate dance of rendezvous and proximity operations (RPO) [blackswanspace.com, April 2024]. The software found an early audience, reportedly securing commercial customers in the EU and United States and integrating tools like MATLAB/Simulink at client request [blackswanspace.com].

From simulation to flight hardware

The simulation was the wedge, but the real ambition was always to leave the digital realm. In 2025, Blackswan announced its first major hardware deal: the delivery of its RPO Kit to the European "ASTRAL" mission, a landmark in-orbit refueling project [blackswanspace.com, November 2025]. This marked the company’s pivot from pure software to a hybrid model. The RPO Kit is a commercial, off-the-shelf payload designed to be bolted onto a client’s spacecraft. It uses vision-based navigation to autonomously guide a satellite to within 4 millimeters and half a degree of its target,a level of precision necessary for docking or delicate capture operations [blackswanspace.com].

The company’s funding history maps this evolution from simulation provider to hardware-in-space contender.

Pre-seed (Apr 2024) | 0.76 | M EUR
Seed (Sep 2026) | 2.5 | M EUR

An initial €760,000 pre-seed round in 2024, led by ScaleWolf, was framed around pioneering satellite autonomy software [blackswanspace.com, April 2024]. The larger €2.5 million seed round in 2026, led by Iron Wolf Capital, was explicitly to fund the commercialization and in-orbit testing of the RPO Kit, targeted for 2027 [Tech.eu, September 2026]. The presence of Linas Sargautis, a co-founder of the successful Lithuanian smallsat builder NanoAvionics, as a repeat investor across both rounds, signals a vote of confidence in the team’s technical roadmap from someone who has navigated this path before [blackswanspace.com, April 2024].

The autonomy stack for a crowded orbit

Blackswan’s bet is on the industrialization of space. The old model of bespoke, one-off missions crafted by aerospace primes is giving way to a more modular, repeatable approach. The startup is building a stack for this new paradigm.

• The Digital Foundry. The Mission Design Simulator is the planning and validation layer. It handles orbital mechanics, generates synthetic visual data for training navigation algorithms, and runs Monte Carlo analyses to stress-test mission plans [blackswanspace.com].
• The Navigation Brain. The RPO Kit is the execution layer. Its claim is to package the complex software for vision-based pose estimation and real-time onboard processing (at 10Hz or faster) into a standardized, plug-and-play unit [blackswanspace.com].
• The Verification Bridge. The company is also developing a platform called ACE, focused on autonomous software verification and validation, which would complete the loop from design to certified flight code [blackswanspace.com, April 2024].

This full-stack approach aims to serve a specific and growing customer base: satellite integrators, operators, and the companies pioneering in-space servicing and debris removal. By starting with the simulation, Blackswan ingrains its tools and methodologies into a customer’s workflow early, creating a natural path to its hardware. The company has also tapped into non-dilutive funding, receiving over half a million euros through European Space Agency programs to develop its vision-based navigation technology [inovacijuagentura.lt].

Scaling a deeptech footprint

Operating from Vilnius provides a talent and cost advantage, but the market for advanced space hardware is global. In September 2025, Blackswan opened a U.S. office in Golden, Colorado, and hired a local sales manager, a clear move to be closer to both commercial and defense customers in the world’s largest space economy [blackswanspace.com, September 2025]. The team, which LinkedIn lists at 11-50 employees, has grown to include a Chief Commercial Officer, Tomas Malinauskas, to lead this commercial push [LinkedIn][ahk-balt.org, Autumn 2025]. The recent seed capital is earmarked for this U.S. expansion and for taking the RPO Kit through its final stages of development toward that crucial 2027 in-orbit demonstration [Tech.eu, September 2026].

The precision gap

The risks here are inherent to the category. Blackswan is not just selling SaaS; it is selling flight hardware where failure is spectacularly public. The company reports its RPO Kit has undergone TRL 5 laboratory testing at an ESA facility, but laboratory success and orbital performance are separated by the harsh reality of space [blackswanspace.com]. Furthermore, the competitive landscape, while not named in sources, is formidable. The market for in-orbit servicing is attracting major aerospace players and well-funded startups globally, all racing to define the standards. Blackswan’s answer appears to be its focused, full-stack integration and its early-mover advantage in simulation, which builds customer trust and generates proprietary data to refine its systems.

For now, the work happens in the simulation. An engineer in Vilnius or Colorado tweaks a parameter, and a digital satellite inches closer to its target. The question Blackswan Space is built to answer is not merely whether machines can autonomously dock in orbit, but whether the entire process,from the first line of code to the final, physical click of a docking mechanism,can be made predictable, repeatable, and ultimately, mundane. They are betting that the future of space infrastructure belongs to those who can master the boring, millimeter-perfect business of making the extraordinary routine.

Sources

1. [SpaceNews, September 2026] Blackswan Space raises €2.9 million seed round for satellite rendezvous technology | https://spacenews.com/blackswan-raises-2-9-million-seed-round-for-satellite-rendezvous-technology/
2. [blackswanspace.com, April 2024] Blackswan Space raises €760k to Pioneer Satellite Autonomy | https://blackswanspace.com/2024/04/08/blackswan-space-raises-e760k-to-pioneer-satellite-autonomy/
3. [blackswanspace.com, November 2025] Blackswan Space secures RPO Kit delivery to “ASTRAL” | https://blackswanspace.com/2025/11/21/blackswan-space-secures-rpo-kit-delivery-to-astral-a-european-landmark-in-orbit-refuelling-mission/
4. [Tech.eu, September 2026] Blackswan Space raises €2.5M to take autonomous spacecraft navigation into orbit | https://tech.eu/2026/09/30/blackswan-space-raises-eur25m-to-take-autonomous-spacecraft-navigation-into-orbit/
5. [inovacijuagentura.lt] The black swan of the space sector | https://www.inovacijuagentura.lt/en/naujiena/the-black-swan-of-the-space-sector-how-lithuanian-innovations-are-transforming-the-space-industry/
6. [blackswanspace.com, September 2025] Blackswan Space opens its US office in Golden, Colorado | https://blackswanspace.com/2025/09/15/blackswan-space-opens-its-us-office-in-golden-colorado-usa/
7. [LinkedIn] Blackswan Space | https://lt.linkedin.com/company/blackswanspace
8. [ahk-balt.org, Autumn 2025] Blackswan Space: from Vilnius to the stars | https://www.ahk-balt.org/et/publikationen/baltic-business-quarterly/bbq-autumn-2025/blackswan-space-from-vilnius-to-the-stars