It would be easy to be cynical about a German-French startup named The Exploration Company, which aims to build an increasingly sophisticated lineup of spaceships that could one day launch astronauts into orbit.<\/p>\n
After all, European space startups don\u2019t have the greatest track record, and even with billions of dollars, one of the world\u2019s leading aerospace companies, Boeing, has failed so far to deliver a fully space-worthy human vehicle. Space is hard; human spaceflight is harder. So when a European startup shows up with grandiose plans, one\u2019s natural inclination might be to dismiss them.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s more or less how I felt before I spoke with the founder of The Exploration Company, H\u00e9l\u00e8ne Huby, this week. She was surprisingly frank about the difficulties in pulling this off and shrewd about her political assessment of why now might just be the time for a new generation of European spacecraft.<\/p>\n
\u201cI realize this is a very, very big challenge,\u201d she told Ars.<\/p>\n
An economist by training, Huby joined the European aerospace firm Airbus in 2013, working various jobs, including space strategy, before becoming the company\u2019s vice president for the Orion spacecraft\u2019s service module. As part of NASA\u2019s Artemis Program to return humans to the Moon, Europe is building the service module that provides power and propulsion to the Orion capsule.<\/p>\n
The service module is based on a spacecraft previously built by Airbus for the European Space Agency known as the Automated Transfer Vehicle, or ATV. This ATV spacecraft flew cargo to the International Space Station through 2015 before its retirement. Huby said it was cool to participate in NASA\u2019s grand exploration program but said Europe\u2019s role was also frustrating. Why? Because the service module was essentially based on 20-year-old technology, and it wouldn\u2019t be reused. In some sense, working on the service module felt like looking into the past rather than working toward the future.<\/p>\n
,<\/p>\n
She found herself wanting to build something more modern. Looking across the Atlantic, she drew inspiration from what SpaceX was doing with its reusable Falcon 9 rocket. She watched humans launch into space aboard Crew Dragon and saw that same vehicle fly again and again. \u201cI have a huge admiration for what SpaceX has done,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
Huby also saw opportunity in that company\u2019s success. SpaceX is the only provider of crew transportation in the Western world. It\u2019s likely that Boeing\u2019s Starliner spacecraft will never become a serious competitor. India\u2019s human spaceflight program is making some progress, but it\u2019s unclear whether the Gaganyaan vehicle will serve non-Indian customers.<\/p>\n
The opportunity she saw was to provide an alternative to SpaceX based in Europe. This would yield 100 percent of the market in Europe and offer an option to countries like Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Australia, and other nations interested in going to space.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know it\u2019s super hard, and I know it was crazy,\u201d Huby said. \u201cBut I wanted to try.\u201d<\/p>\n
She founded The Exploration Company in August 2021 with $50,000 in the bank and a small team of four people. Three years later, the company has 200 employees and recently announced that it had raised $160 million in Series B funding. It marked the first time that two European sovereign funds, French Tech and Germany-based DTCF, invested together. The news even scored a congratulatory post on LinkedIn from French President Emmanuel Macron, who wrote, \u201cThe history of space continues to be written in Europeans.\u201d<\/p>\n
To date, then, Huby has raised nearly $230 million. Her company has already flown a mission, the \u201cBikini\u201d reentry demonstrator, on the debut flight of the Ariane 6 rocket this last summer. The small capsule was intended to demonstrate the company\u2019s reentry technology. Unfortunately, the rocket\u2019s upper stage failed on its deorbit burn, so the Bikini capsule remains stuck in space.<\/p>\n
Still, the company is already hard at work on a second demonstration vehicle, about 2.5 meters in diameter, that will have more than a dozen customers on board. The spacecraft for this demonstration flight, named Mission Possible, is fully assembled, Huby said, and it will launch on SpaceX\u2019s Transporter 14 mission next summer, likely in July. This mission was developed in 2.5 years at a cost of $20 million, plus $10 million for the launch.<\/p>\n
,<\/p>\n
After this, Huby said developing the Nyx cargo spacecraft is next on the roadmap. This vehicle, similar in size to SpaceX\u2019s Cargo Dragon vehicle, will have the capacity to dock with the International Space Station, or other space stations, and also be recoverable for reuse. The current timeline for Nyx\u2019s debut is 2028 (Huby recognizes that, yes, in aerospace, sometimes projects miss their schedule). All of the funding from the Series B raise will go toward Nyx\u2019s development.<\/p>\n
The Exploration Company expects to receive $200 million from the European Space Agency in 2025, provided that Mission Possible successfully demonstrates propulsion in space and reentry. Huby said this demonstration will show the European space community that her company and its ambitions are for real.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf we don\u2019t mess up, the excitement will be high enough that we can get the funding,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
This additional money will help Nyx reach the launch pad. As for the vehicle\u2019s rocket, the spacecraft is compatible with Europe\u2019s Ariane 6 and a host of other boosters, including SpaceX\u2019s Falcon 9, Rocket Lab\u2019s Neutron, Japan\u2019s H3, and India\u2019s GSLV.<\/p>\n
Huby said Nyx is being developed with the crew in mind, and her belief is that by demonstrating competency with private cargo delivery, European policymakers will be willing to take the next step to help fund the capability to carry astronauts. Italy and France are most interested in this, she said.<\/p>\n
\u201cNyx will show that \u2018hey, we are almost there,\u2019\u201d she said. \u201cIt will show that we can do it. I believe it would be very inspirational for Europe.\u201d<\/p>\n
Just like SpaceX needed significant funding from NASA\u2014nearly $3 billion for Crew Dragon\u2014Huby said her company would require a similar amount of funding from European nations. It\u2019s not possible to go to the private capital markets right now, get $3 billion, and promise a great return a decade from now. That\u2019s not how it works.<\/p>\n
So she\u2019s taking things one step at a time: a demonstration next year followed by springboard funding to finish Nyx. And after that? Well, the stars may align for The Exploration Company to send humans to the stars.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
It would be easy to be cynical about a German-French startup named The Exploration Company, which aims to build an increasingly sophisticated lineup of spaceships that could one day launch astronauts into orbit. After all, European space startups don\u2019t have the greatest track record, and even with billions of dollars, one of the world\u2019s leading […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":44803,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[244,21,279],"class_list":["post-44801","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-europe","tag-space","tag-the-exploration-company"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44801"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=44801"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/44801\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/44803"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=44801"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=44801"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=44801"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}