Thales Alecia Space
The European Space Agency has awarded initial contracts to a German-based startup and one of the continent’s established aerospace companies to develop spacecraft to transport cargo to and from space stations in low Earth orbit.
ESA announced the two 25 million euro ($27 million) contracts on May 22. The Exploration Company, jointly located in France and Germany, and Thales Alenia Space of Italy beat four other companies in the race for ESA funding through the LEO Cargo Return Service program.
These contracts will run for two years, until June 2026. In this first phase of the program, The Exploration Company and Thales Alenia Space will refine their concepts, mature technologies and focus on the requirements for their cargo vehicles. ESA plans to award contracts for the second phase of the LEO Cargo Return Service program in 2026, looking at a two-way demonstration flight to the International Space Station (ISS) in 2028.
The Exploration Company, founded in 2021, says its Nyx cargo transporter could fly to the space station as soon as 2027. Thales Alenia Space’s demonstration mission is targeted for late 2028, it said in a statement the company. Exploration plans to fly a subscale re-entry vehicle on the first flight of Europe’s Ariane 6 rocket in July. Thales Alenia Space has not built a re-entry craft, but has produced pressurized shells for several ISS modules.
ESA requirements call for commercial European cargo vehicles to be able to deliver 4 metric tons of equipment into low Earth orbit and return 2 metric tons to Earth.
Initially, ESA wanted to select three companies to continue with the European cargo program. Samantha Cristoforetti, an ESA astronaut who is leading the procurement effort, said only the two winners “have presented a combination of work plan and funding scheme that is appropriate for the purposes of this call.”
Cristoforetti told Ars that ESA received “six valid proposals” from European industry. She declined to identify the other competitors, but two of the proposals are believed to come from ArianeGroup and Rocket Factory Augsburg.
Partial commitment
Representatives of ESA’s 22 member states met in Seville, Spain, last November to decide on several priorities for the space agency. The meeting resulted in several key decisions. Member states have agreed to adopt a more commercial model for buying launch services from European rocket startups in the future, although in the near term ESA remains all-in on the long-delayed Ariane 6 and Vega C rockets.
European governments have also signed up for the first phase of the LEO Cargo Return Service, but the initial €25 million contracts signed with The Exploration Company and Thales Alenia Space will only go so far. At its next high-level budget meeting at the end of next year, ESA will ask member states for the remaining funding needed to carry out the program through demonstration flights to the ISS.
The ESA operates in budget cycles that typically last three years. This helps ensure stable funding for the agency’s programs, but can hinder the rapid changes emblematic of startup culture. However, Josef Aschbacher, ESA’s director general, won approval from its member states in November to use some of ESA’s funding to partner with the commercial vehicle industry.
“We want to be on the space station around the 28th,” Aschbacher said at a May 23 press briefing. “We now have to assess the technical proposals and capabilities in detail, but it is extremely fast and in fact faster than some of our overseas competitors have been able to build such a vehicle.”
Aschbacher seems serious about making ESA more nimble. However, the agency’s budget and direction are determined by European government ministers through the prism of local domestic politics.