If receiving an order from Madrid to Castilleja de la Cuesta (Seville) can cause you some headaches in the form of a delivery person who never arrives, imagine sending a package from Madrid to the moon. Space logistics is one of the last major bottlenecks in the commercial aerospace industry.
For decades, sending cargo to space has been reserved almost exclusively to government agencieswith astronomical budgets and opaque processes. Today the industry is more open than ever, the demand for space shipments is growing, but the logistics infrastructure that supports them remains artisanal and fragmented. Two Madrid startups, Usyncro and Eye4Skythey are trying to change it.
A packet destined for space. Send a kilogram of cargo into space costs approximately 20,000 euros and that is just the beginning. That package in question has to go through customs in several countries, go through the hands of multiple carriers and comply with export regulations for sensitive material.
ESA and NASA satellite components are subject to dual-use regulations that vary between jurisdictions and require specific licenses for each international transfer (e.g. export control regulations and laws such as NASA’s ITAR). And when you arrive at your destination there is no one to sign a receipt. There is also no warehouse or workers. Just a satellite in orbit waiting for a critical component on which a scientific mission depends.
The presentations. Usyncro is a SaaS platform founded in Madrid in 2018 that digitizes international trade logistics through blockchain and artificial intelligence, connecting all the actors of a shipment in a single panel: carriers, customs and operators.
Eye4Sky is a spin-off of the National Institute of Aerospace Technology (INTA). It was founded in 2022 by researchers with more than twenty years of experience in space optics. Manufactures polarization modulators based on liquid crystalsoptical devices the size of a spectacle lens and barely 200 grams that analyze light to obtain information about the solar magnetic field or the composition of the atmosphere of other planets, something that a conventional camera cannot do, at a lower cost than traditional instruments and equivalent performance. It operates from the Madrid Science Park, within the ESA BIC incubation program.
Why is it important. What Usyncro and Eye4Sky are building goes beyond their own businesses because it points to a structural problem: managing the supply chain of a space mission has always been the territory of large contractors and government agencies. A traceable and standardized digital corridor could lower that barrier to entry.
On the other hand, INTA is not a university, it is an organization attached to the Ministry of Defense with a long research tradition but little history of serving as a seed for commercial companies. That Eye4Sky is its first spin-off after decades of applied research represents a paradigm shift: institutions that have historically operated in public and military logic are beginning to open up to civilian commercialization.
As for projects on the table, Eye4Sky modulators are already present on the solar observation satellite jointly developed by the European Space Agency and NASA Solar Orbiter, are confirmed in VigilESA’s first space weather mission and in the quest Talisman of Satlantis to detect methane in the Earth’s atmosphere. Usyncro, for its part, already certified via blockchain the launch of Hydra Space satellites and executed the first digital air cargo corridor between Europe and Latin America. The joint project would be the definitive leap: applying that same logic to the most complex logistics chain that exists.
Context. Usyncro was a conventional logistics company specialized in coordinating land, air and sea transportation chains. Its value proposition was clear: digitize and centralize the management of complex logistics operations with multiple actors, eliminating the dispersion of information and manual processes. It worked well on land, but the sky is the limit.
The turning point came when joining the Retech Digital Entrepreneurship Network of the Community of Madrid, whose aerospace node is located in Tres Cantos. There they met Eye4Skya company that manufactured components for ESA and NASA missions, but had no way to reliably and traceably manage its logistics chain to the satellite. Just what Usyncro knew how to do: manage complex logistics chains with multiple actors. Of course, this time the final destination is in orbit.
How they do it. Usyncro is developing a digital logistics corridor, a system that centralizes the entire journey of merchandise in a single control panel, from when it leaves the factory until it reaches its orbital destination. Each party involved in the chain is recorded, each transaction generates a documentary record and at each node along the route images are captured that certify the status and position of the shipment.
Blockchain technology guarantees the integrity of the data and reduces time in each phase of the process. The final delivery is certified automatically, without the need for a physical recipient. In essence, it is applying to space logistics the same logic that has transformed land logistics in the last decade: total visibility, real-time data and end-to-end traceability.
Yes, but. The project is still in the testing phase. Usyncro and Eye4Sky are shipping material to different countries via multiple routes to validate that the system works under real conditions before scaling up to space missions. Digitizing terrestrial logistics is already a complex problem, but doing it for space cargo adds extra difficulty in issues such as legislation or handling conditions. The margins of error are practically zero.
It remains to be seen whether the platform can withstand the operational, regulatory and technical pressure of a real mission before the first big test next year. As Delia Rodríguez, CEO of Eye4Sky, tells: “Our devices are the eye of missions that protect the Earth and that starting in 2027 will monitor from space the invisible shield that protects our planet.”
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Cover | SpaceX
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