WARSAW — The Polish optical systems manufacturer Scanway Space has secured its first order from an American company, in this case from Intuitive Machines for a multispectral telescope instrument to map the moon’s surface.
Scanway CEO Jędrzej Kowalewski told <em>SpaceNews the optical instrument, set to be launched in 2026, will allow Intuitive Machines to search for minerals on the moon from lunar orbit. This includes ilmenite, a mineral that contains titanium, iron and oxygen, and which Kowalewski said could be helpful for building lunar colonies.
The size of the contract was not announced.
Scanway is working on expanding its portfolio with new products with “telescopes the size of an SUV,” according to a Scanway press release, and will focus on developing Earth observation satellites with a ground sampling distance below 1 meter in resolution to pave the way for orders from major space industry players. The company is hoping this will allow it to cater to the needs of established clients while broadening its international presence and securing deals throughout the world.
“We want to achieve increasingly larger diameters and resolutions, including hyper- and multi-spectral instruments. We also develop systems for space inspection, such as wide-angle cameras,” Kowalewski said.
Earlier this year, Scanway signed a deal with the European Space Agency (ESA) to build a multispectral data processing system that will handle lunar imagery from the optical instrument to be operated by Intuitive Machines. The company will supply a comprehensive satellite data processing system.
The contracts come during a time of rapid growth for Scanway, which reached 11.6 million Polish złoty ($3.2 million) in revenue for the first half of 2025 — up 119% compared with the first six months of 2024, according to the company.
In addition to the U.S. market, Kowalewski said that Scanway has made deals throughout the world. They include:
- A contract with clients in Asia and that it will develop telescopes for methane detection from orbit for the South Korean company Nara Space.
- A $9 million contract, its largest to date, for a high-resolution telescope system for Earth observation for an undisclosed client in southeast Asia.
- An order from the Danish satellite manufacturer Space Inventor for a telescope to conduct “advanced asteroseismological observations.”
- Orders for camera systems for inspections, for example for satellite-to-satellite docking for customers in Lithuania.
- Building a telescope for Marble Imaging, a German startup, which is planning to develop 200 satellites,
“At the same time, the American market is very important to us, and we also want to grow our presence there,” Kowalewski said.
In Poland, Scanway is contributing to the 59 million euro ($68.75 million) Country Awareness Mission in Land Analysis (CAMILA) satellite constellation project, which is financed by the ESA. The project is led by Polish space company Creotech Instruments in partnership with several Poland-based subcontractors. Scanway is also supplying a telescope for the first PIAST satellite constellation, under development for the Polish Ministry of National Defense.
In late September, Scanway published a new strategy for 2026 through 2028, which sets the goal of establishing the company as one of the largest optical payload integrators in Europe.