Thales Alecia Space
The European Space Agency has awarded initial contracts to a Germany-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.
On May 22, ESA announced two contracts worth €25 million ($27 million). The Exploration Company, based in France and Germany, and Thales Alenia Space of Italy beat out four other companies in the competition for ESA funding through the LEO Cargo Return Service program.
These contracts will last for two years, until June 2026. In this first phase of the program, The Exploration Company and Thales Alenia Space will improve 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 return 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 early as 2027. The demonstration mission of Thales Alenia Space is planned until the end of 2028, according to the company’s press release. Exploration plans to fly a re-entry vehicle on the first flight of Europe’s Ariane 6 rocket in July. Thales Alenia Space did not build the re-entry vehicle, but it produced pressure shells for several modules on the ISS.
ESA requirements dictate that commercial European cargo vehicles must be able to deliver 4 metric tons of equipment into low Earth orbit and return 2 metric tons to Earth.
ESA originally wanted to select three companies to continue with the European cargo program. Samantha Cristoforetti, an ESA astronaut who leads procurement, said only two winners “presented a combination of work plan and funding scheme that was suitable for the needs of this call.”
Cristoforetti told Ars that ESA had received “six valid proposals” from European industry. She declined to identify other competitors, but two proposals are believed to come from ArianeGroup and Rocket Factory Augsburg.
Partial commitment
Representatives of ESA’s 22 member countries met in Seville, Spain last November to decide on several priorities for the space agency. Several key decisions were made at the meeting. 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 off on 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 its member states for the remainder of the funds needed to implement the program through demonstration flights to the ISS.
ESA works in budget cycles that usually last three years. This helps ensure stable funding for the agency’s programs, but can stand in the way of the rapid changes that are emblematic of startup culture. Even so, Josef Aschbacher, ESA’s director general, won the approval of his member states in November to use some of ESA’s funding to partner with industry on commercial cargo vehicles.
“We want to be on the space station around ’28,” Aschbacher said at a May 23 press conference. “Now we have to evaluate the technical proposals and possibilities in detail, but this is extremely fast and is actually faster than some of our competitors abroad have been able to build such a vehicle.”
Aschbacher seems serious about making ESA more nimble. However, the budget and direction of the agency are determined by European government ministers through the prism of parochial domestic politics.
