ESA opens a crack, solar sail startup secures funding, and more
So, issue 2. I'm pretty proud of the progress from the first week. You'll see that I created a fancy new header and that I've included the first exclusive infographic. This medium will continue to evolve but I just want to say thank you to you 15 brilliant souls who have signed up thus far, it means the world to me!
Biggest stories of the week
French startup Gama has secured €2 million in funding to develop a solar sail mission that it expects to be launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 in October. Dubbed Gama Alpha, the mission will see a 73.3-square-meter solar sail deployed from a six-unit cubesat (1 standard cubesat unit is 10 cm × 10 cm × 10 cm).
ESA announced five finalists for European Space Resources Innovation Centre (ESRIC) Space Resources Challenge. The challenge tasks team with developing lunar rovers that are capable of prospecting for resources within the shadowy regions of the Moon's poles.
German launch startup Isar Aerospace tells European Spaceflight that the maiden flight of the company's Spectrum rocket will be launched for the first time in 2022/23. This is the first time the company has deviated from its projections of a late 2022 debut.
LARES2, the primary payload for the maiden Avio Vega-C mission, has been approved for shipment to Kourou from OHB Italia headquarters in Milan for integration with the launch vehicle.
Arianespace Senior Vice President of the Vega Business Unit Marino Fragnito told European Spaceflight that Avio has enough Ukrainian-built RD-843 engines to support Vega and Vega-C missions in 2023. This conflicts with several statements that have already been made. I'll be taking a closer look at these contradictions next week.
Main Story: ESA Director General has opened a crack to European launch startups
In an August 29 press release, the European Space Agency announced that it plans to propose that a competitive procurement process be utilised for an ESA science mission that would be launched in or around 2024. This is the first time the agency has signaled to European microlauncher startups that they will be able to compete to launch ESA missions.
This call to Europe's launch startups is a direct response to the conflict in Ukraine that has severely limited the agency's access to space.
“Today we face unparalleled challenges, but I am confident that together our Member States can build for Europe a stronger and even more robust capability," said ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher.
ESA Director of Space Transportation Daniel Neuenschwander has asked European launch startups that are interested in carrying ESA payloads to provide "robust technical information about the state of their developments."
The information supplied will then be used to create proposals about the startups’ potential to support European institutional missions at the ESA ministerial council meeting that will take place in November 2022.
Currently, ESA has given no indication of what payload it intends to put forward for this initiative. However, we can assume that it will likely be small, under a few hundred kilograms.
With that information and the proposed 2024 launch date, the European launch startups that will most likely be in a position to compete for the contract are Isar Aerospace, Rocket Factory Augsburg, and HyImpulse from Germany, and Obex and Skyrora from the United Kingdom. All will likely put themselves forward for the honour, as being the first to launch an ESA mission will be a significant endorsement of their capabilities.
Although I'd have loved to have seen the ESA Director General come out and say that every payload to be launched by the agency will go through a competitive procurement process, it is undeniable that political pressure against such a move is still significant. This is, nonetheless, a huge step in the right direction.
Still here? We'll, it's time to vote
During this week, I posted an infographic outlining when a number of European launch startups are expected to debut their respective launch vehicles. Considering the response, I figured I'd take it up a notch. So, I've created a page to gauge when people think each European launch startup will debut their orbital-class rocket. Interested? Click on the link below.