About

Overview

Students will be tasked to design and pitch a mission based in this emerging and exciting new field in the space industry. This gives students exposure to a broad range of topics, including space-based solar power, pharmaceuticals, active debris removal, and microgravity manufacturing.

The competition aims to give interdisciplinary teams, of at least 5 and up to 12 students, a stepping stone into the field, and experience in mission design, engineering, business development, and other industry-relevant skills.

Teams are allocated an industry mentor who will check in with them, approximately, on a monthly basis to offer guidance and advice. There is no entry fee associated with this competition.

Teams will be tasked with a series of challenges throughout the competition, and will ultimately pitch their business proposals to a panel of investors in a Dragon’s Den style scenario.

What Is ISAM?

Space is experiencing a metamorphosis. Once an exclusive playing ground for national space agencies and big government contractors, it is now energized by the advent of new players, innovative technologies, and disruptive business models. These advances have unlocked new economic opportunities in a number of emerging markets. One area that is seeing great interest and high potential valuations from industry experts is that of In-Orbit Servicing, Assembly and Manufacturing. ISAM concepts encompass a plethora of activities across a number of different market verticals and offer direct benefits to several fields, enabling the next generation of space-based services. These activities include, but are not limited to, debris removal, life extension, in-orbit repairing, in-orbit manufacturing (for both space and Earth), space robotics, and asset reallocation.

SAM

Why Should I Enter?

You’ll gain exposure to real-world business and technical challenges faced by the space industry
The competition challenges have been designed in collaboration with industry partners in order to develop key skills relevant to the field of IOSM
Your team will be assigned a mentor from a space organisation to support you throughout the competition
Prizes will be awarded in different categories

History

In-Orbit Servicing and Manufacturing was founded in 2021 and the Satellite Applications Catapult was its main sponsor. As of 2025, the ISOM has been rebranded to ISAM.

Past Winners

2023-2024

Peryton Space

This year's edition of In-Orbit Servicing and Manufacturing found its competition day run hybrid. Teams once again pitched their business cases and listened to early career focused talks from experts in industry. The winning team this year was Peryton Space from the University of Surrey.

2022-2023

CranSEDS

This was the second edition of the In-Orbit Servicing and Manufacturing competition. In the final challenge, teams had to design a poster and write a "one-pager" before putting together a venture capital pitch for their hypothetical pitch. The winning team this year was CranSEDS with a special mention to BristolSEDS who came second.

2021-2022

BristolSEDS

The UKSEDS’ IOSM competition from 2021/2022 was the first of its kind. The aim of the competition was to come up with an IOSM-related mission and justify the project’s proposal from both a business and engineering perspective to then compete for a hypothetical investment in the project. Throughout the year teams had to develop ideas and present their progress across 3 reports with deadlines spread across the year. Finally, in the final stage of the competition teams were invited to the Satellite Applications Catapult’s facilities in the Westcott Space Cluster to pitch their project ideas to a series of experts from different companies in the IOSM sector that acted as hypothetical investors.

Best Presentation: BristolSEDS

Best Report: BristolSEDS