Yuri awarded German Founder's Prize

Despite a sharp increase in rocket launches in recent years and the possibility of launching payloads into space via rideshare, experiments in space are still a financial feat. As the website of the German Founders Award states, Yuri's offering is "not aimed solely at seven astronauts in space, but at the well-being of seven billion people on Earth."

The founders Maria Birlem (CEO), Christian Bruderrek (COO), Philipp Schulien (CTO) and Mark Kugel (CCO) have developed minilabs that can be used to conduct experiments at low cost. Depending on requirements, this starts at €10,000 in microgravity on a parabolic flight or at €95,000 on the International Space Station ISS in weightlessness. In addition, the team also takes care of the approval of experiments, the preparation of customs declarations, the clarification of tax matters or the coordination of logistics, among other things.

According to the jury, Yuri has thus facilitated and democratized access to research in zero gravity. Customers include NASA, GlaxoSmithKline and international universities. As part of the "Überflieger2 - Student Experiments on the ISS" competition, Yuri is looking for experiment proposals until October 15, 2021, the best four of which will be carried out on the International Space Station.

The German Founder's Prize, a joint initiative of stern, Sparkasse, Porsche and ZDF, is not the first award. Yuri was already the 2020 winner of the CyberOne Hightech Award, the Science4Life Venture Cup and ESA Space Solutions. In the future, however, Yuri not only wants to conduct (or have conducted) experiments in weightlessness, but also to manufacture its own products in the medical field.

via Deutscher Gründerpreis, Yuri, ZDF Mediathek