SITAEL‘s newly inaugurated facility in Pisa sets a new benchmark for space sector: here will run the serial production of electric propulsion systems for next-generation satellites.
The Smart Space Factory 4.0 covers 300 sqm and is fully equipped with an ISO-8 clean room, advanced assembly lines, and a comprehensive suite of test systems dedicated to Hall-effect thrusters and their fluidic subsystems. The facility includes five thermal-vacuum chambers, a vibration table to reproduce the vibrations of a space launch, as well as stations for the assembly and verification of Hall-effect electric thrusters and the fluidic systems that feed them, with a production capacity of dozens of thrusters per year.
Unlike traditional approaches focusing only on prototyping, the new factory’s industrial set-up supports serial production of dozens of thrusters per year, meeting the growing demands from missions like the IRIDE satellite constellation. SITAEL’s integrated supply chain—from prototype development to stringent in-orbit qualification and extensive quality testing—delivers scalable, repeatable manufacturing capacity.
SITAEL’s MicroHETSat electric thruster, successfully in-orbit validated with over 3,500 cathode ignitions, underscores the company’s expertise and reliability in electric propulsion. This achievement, backed by the Italian Space Agency and public-private investments through the Space Factory 4.0 initiative, establishes SITAEL as a reference player for electric propulsion in Italy and across Europe.
The Pisa plant works in synergy with the national space hub already operating in Mola di Bari, which features over 1,000 sqm of clean rooms for satellite integration and functional testing. Together, these facilities give Italy a strategic industrial advantage in the fast-evolving space propulsion sector, ready for both domestic and international market expansion.
“The thruster factory is a dream come true, because it was not easy to get here: producing technology in series with a complex production and test cycle, in a controlled environment, is not trivial. It is not for everyone. And it is only the first step. We can increase production easily by replicating the space factory model“, said Chiara Pertosa, CEO of SITAEL.
