ESA selects Thales Alenia Space and The Exploration Company for commercial payload program

WASHINGTON The European Space Agency has selected one of the continent’s largest space companies and one of its best-funded startups for research contracts that could lead to commercial payloads and crew vehicles.

ESA announced on May 22 that it has awarded contracts worth about 25 million euros ($27 million) each to Thales Alenia Space and The Exploration Company. The two companies will advance their concepts for vehicles designed to transport cargo to and from the International Space Station and commercial space stations.

Today ESA has further demonstrated its leadership in space for Europe and European citizens. The signing of the cargo return service contracts to low Earth orbit shows how ESA has been modernized to meet the demands of the next era of the space economy, Josef Aschabcher, ESA director general, said in a statement.

ESA announced plans for the cargo vehicle program at the European Space Summit in Seville, Spain, last November. The program, modeled on NASA’s Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) efforts from nearly two decades ago, will provide support for commercially developed vehicles that can provide cargo services and may later evolve in manned spacecraft.

Contracts with Thales Alenia Space and The Exploration Company cover initial design work on their vehicles. ESA will seek funding for later stages at the next ministerial meeting in late 2025, with the aim of having at least one vehicle ready to enter service by 2028.

Thales Alenia Space, one of Europe’s largest space companies, is offering a capsule it says will be compatible with the ISS and commercial space stations, as well as the Lunar Gateway. Thales facilities in Italy and France will be involved in the project together with Altec, a joint venture of Thales Alenia Space Italia and the Italian Space Agency ASI, for the ground segment.

Using its expertise in space exploration infrastructure and vehicles, the company, fully in line with the vision of the European Space Agency, wants to invest in the development of technological solutions to give Europe sustainable access to low Earth orbit, said Massimo Comparini, deputy CEO. and senior executive vice president of Thales Alenia Space, in a statement.

The Exploration Company is a startup working on spacecraft designed to transport cargo to and from Earth orbit and into outer space. Its first demonstration mission is scheduled to fly on the inaugural launch of Ariane 6 now scheduled for the first half of June. The company raised $44 million in a Series A round in early 2023, one of the largest seed-stage rounds for a European space startup.

We want to fly to the space station on the 27th, so we have already started work on the final ship, Hlne Huby, chief executive of The Exploration Company, said in an interview during the 39th.^th Space Symposium last month. That vehicle, she said, would be ready for a preliminary design review this summer.

While competing in ESAs program, Huby said he was working to win business from American companies working on commercial space stations. The company announced earlier this month that it had opened a US office led by Mark Kirasich, a former NASA official whose roles at the agency included being manager of the Orion program.

If all goes well, she said then, we will have an American client and a European client.

ESA did not immediately disclose how many companies submitted proposals, or why the agency chose two when it previously said it could choose up to three. ESA officials previously said they had seen strong interest in the program based on attendance at procurement meetings.

Among the companies that had expressed interest in the competition were ArianeGroup, which has proposed a reusable vehicle called SUSIE, and Rocket Factory Augsburg, which announced earlier this year a cargo vehicle called Argo that it proposed in collaboration with Space Cargo Unlimited. and ATMOS Space Cargo. .

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