Dragonfly Aerospace

Dragonfly Aerospace is a South African aerospace company founded in 2019 by Bryan Dean and a small team of former Space Advisory Company engineers, initially operating as Southern Space before rebranding to Dragonfly Aerospace. Headquartered in Stellenbosch's Techno Park, the company grew rapidly to over 100 employees, developing and launching a class-leading 180 kg optical imaging satellite within three years of founding.

The company designs and manufactures a full range of best-in-class electro-optical imagers, from compact CubeSat cameras (Gecko, Mantis, Chameleon, Chameleon Swir, Caiman) to high-resolution microsatellite payloads (DRAGONEYE, Raptor), covering RGB, multispectral, hyperspectral and SWIR imaging. Dragonfly also builds its own satellite platforms — the μDragonfly, Dragonfly and ηDragonfly buses — to deliver turnkey, vertically integrated Earth observation missions with minimum time, cost and risk.

Dragonfly's flagship achievement is EOSSAT-1, launched on 3 January 2023 as the world's first commercial agri-focused satellite and the first of a planned seven-satellite constellation supporting sustainable agriculture and forestland monitoring. The company operates a 3,000 m² design and manufacturing facility with 1,000 m² of cleanroom space, targeting production of up to 48 satellites (200 kg class) per year, and counts NanoAvionics, Spire, EnduroSat, Loft Orbital and Pixxel among its customers.