Mysterious beginnings of MaiaSpace: Part 2
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Mysterious beginnings of MaiaSpace: Part 2
In the first part of The mysterious beginnings of MaiaSpace, I looked at the origins of the vehicle design and how it had probably begun life at CNES as far back as 2019. For the second part of my investigation, I looked at the company itself including its origins, and its history, which there was a lot more of than I had expected.
ArianeGroup would have us believe that the company founded MaiaSpace in 2022. It turns out that not only is the year it was founded incorrect, but also the company that founded it.
Since I am not one to bury leads, I won’t keep you waiting until the tenth paragraph. Company filings show that preparatory work on MaiaSpace was begun in December 2016 by Airbus Safran Launchers.
What is Airbus Safran Launchers?
In June 2014, Airbus and Safran, who together owned 39 percent of Arianespace, proposed a merger that included buying out a 35% stake of Arianespace that was held by CNES for €150 million. The announcement came with a surprising new Ariane 6 design that completely upended the current leading design that focused on utilizing solid rocket motors for the boosters, first stage, and second stage with a Vinci-powered third stage.
The formation of the new company, which was called Airbus Safran Launchers, was announced later that year. The finalization of the purchase of the CNES Arianespace stake would, however, take longer, with the deal being subjected to antitrust investigations by the European Commission. This merger would have a massive impact on the Ariane 6 programme and on the European launch market, but that’s a story for another time.
In May 2017, Airbus Safran Launchers announced that it had rebranded to ArianeGroup kicking off the endless confusion about the difference between Arianespace and ArianeGroup, confusion that lingers even today.
So yes, I was a little hyperbolic with my original claim. Technically speaking MaiaSpace was founded by ArienGroup it just wasn’t called ArianeGroup when it was founded. This does beg the question, however, what was its original purpose since it predates its current iteration by several years?
The beginnings of MaiaSpace
As I said before, Airbus Safran Launchers created MaiaSpace in late 2016. When I saw the year, I immediately thought of the secretive Sparrow project.
Rather amusingly, this project proposed a small rocket design that utilized solid rocket motors for its boosters, first stage, and second stage with a small liquid-fueled third stage, exactly the same design that Airbus and Safran had rejected for Ariane 6 only smaller. According to a brief mention of the project on the Safran Group website, the vehicle’s structures were to be constructed from composite materials.
Very little about this project has been made public. Much of what is known was gleaned from its brief mention in a 2016 report compiled by Geneviève Fioraso for the French government examining the country’s newspace market and an article from Vincent Lamigeon for French publication Challenges.
The Fioraso report mentions the project under a section describing the activities of Airbus Safran Launchers and includes a small diagram of the vehicle. The Lamigeon article describes the cancellation of the project in early 2017. The article also includes a rather priceless quote from then executive president of ArianeGroup Alain Charmeau who stated “the worldwide craze for micro-launchers seems to have decreased a lot." That would certainly change with the founding of Isar Aerospace, Rocket Factory Augsburg, Latitude (which was then Venture Orbital Systems), HyImpulse, and Skyrora occurring within a year of this announcement.
The timeline does seem to match up. MaiaSpace was founded in December 2016 and, according to the company’s public financials, no staff were ever employed. This seems to indicate that the Sparrow project was intended to go into a development phase under MaiaSpace until it was abruptly abandoned in early 2017 when it was abruptly canceled.
Next came Q@TS
Sparrow wasn't the only small launch vehicle design ArianeGroup proposed and then abandoned.
In 2018, ESA was looking to boost the emergence of launch startups in Europe and commissioned a series of microlauncher feasibility studies. One of those studies was from ArianeGroup and was called Q@TS (Quick @ccess To Space). The proposal was for an integrated ecosystem that would provide access to space utilizing a small launch vehicle that employed Norwegian aerospace and defence company Nammo's proven hybrid propulsion technology.
The vehicle was to be 17 metres tall, featuring three stages and a staggeringly low launch cost of $2 million a flight for 100 kg payloads. ArianeGroup used Andoya Space in Norway as its reference spaceport for the proposal.
Interestingly, the report submitted to ESA included some of the other directions the company had pursued. One of those directions was a Themis derivative, which is what the current Maia design is based on.
There is very little information about what happened to the Q@TS project, but it seems to have been quietly abandoned. Nammo, for its part, has continued to develop its hybrid rocket technology and has hinted at founding its own launch startup with a consortium of other companies called ENVOL. However, apart from some marketing material, very little appears to have been done to formalize the startup.
MaiaSpace on ice
MaiaSpace had, as of the end of last year, never employed anyone according to the company’s financial statements. Additionally, the company had no assets and a small negative cash balance for most of its existence up until 2021.
In preparation for what was to come, ArianeGroup appears to have invested an initial €500,000 in the 2021 financial year. This would again contradict what ArianeGroup would have us believe about work on the company only kicking off in 2022. This is the only financial blip in the company’s more than five-year history and certainly indicates that something was happening in 2021
Since the official announcement of MaiaSpace, there have been several large financial injections into the company. The exact extent of this financial outlook will be apparent when the company files its 2022 financials next year.
A new direction
With the announcement of the new direction of MaiaSpace in late 2021 by French Economy Minister Bruno Le Maire, the next stage in the MaiaSpace story had begun. The company’s current description of activities lays out a clear view of what the MaiaSpace hopes to achieve with its new Maia vehicle, from a surface level at least. There is a broader goal not described in the below description of activities that seeks to utilize the technology developed for Maia in a larger family of launch vehicles that will extend beyond MaiaSpace.
The current description of activities is as follows: “design, development and production of a semi-reusable civil launcher with a maximum payload capacity of 700 kg in a sun-synchronous reference orbit of 700 km during the recovery of the main stage (hereinafter the "launcher "); marketing, alone or with a third party, space launch services and launch operations associated with said launcher as well as orbital transport services, carried out in continuity of the launcher launch service.”
There are two important additions to the MaiaSpace story that this description reveals. The first is that the company is exploring the possibility of marketing Maia itself instead of within the Arianespace framework. This could allow the company to be significantly more agile to the needs of its specific customers, which will differ from those of the Ariane 6 and even Vega C.
The second insight is one that has been hinted at before. That is the offering of orbital transport services. In early October, MaiaSpace published a vacancy on LinkedIn for a Senior System Engineer for on-orbit servicing. The listing describes the creation of a "debris hunter" version of its Maia vehicle that will be utilized for active debris removal missions. It also hints at MaiaSpace offering a broader range of on-orbit servicing capabilities, which the description of the company’s activities seems to back up.
Another piece of the puzzle
In preparing for this article, I was contacted by a source that spoke to me with the guarantee that he would remain anonymous. I have confirmed that the source did work at CNES in a department where these discussions were likely to occur.
This source told me that he had first heard about MaiaSpace during weekly CNES department meetings as early as January 2021 under the project name Maia. The discussions included weekly updates from a team working on the project that included examinations of funding options, knowledge transfer, and the technical specifications of the vehicle. These studies were conducted by a team that included CNES staff in addition to staff from the now-closed skunkworks division of ArianeGroup, ArianeWorks.
It would appear that CNES and ArianeWorks created a turnkey microlauncher startup which they then handed to ArianeGroup allowing the French government to take the spotlight with the announcement. Additionally, many of the people who worked on the project at ArianeWorks have likely now been employed by MaiaSpace. One of the most significant figures to have made the jump from ArianeWorks to MaiaSpace is the company’s deputy CEO Jerome Vila, who describes himself as the "founder & leader" of ArianeWorks. Vila had also previously held key positions at CNES including assistant director of research and future programs including space launchers, and head of the prospective, innovation, and future projects of the CNES space launchers directorate - government agencies do love their long titles.
The source also reminded me that although MaiaSpace has committed to not taking any public funding for the development of Maia, public money has been utilized for both Themis and Prometheus, which will be leveraged heavily in the development of Maia. As the propulsion system and structures are two of the most costly elements of a launch vehicle to develop, the company has indirectly received huge development funding and technical assistance from CNES, ESA, and ESA member states.
Conclusion
It continues to baffle me why there is so much secrecy around the origins and operations of MaiaSpace. All the information I’ve found out about the company has been interesting, and that’s about it. It hasn’t been damning or sinister, just ordinary operations of a huge multinational. Why not just be honest with the public? Tell the story, the whole story. If MaiaSpace had launched with a website (which the company still doesn’t have) that had an About Us page that detailed its story, it would be shared and discussed, and retold. A great business embraces its entire history and enjoys sharing all the bumps and diversions because it helps customers and fans connect with the brand.
ArianeGroup has been notoriously bad with this very basic marketing concept. Instead of embracing its story, the company engages in confusing partnerships with skate appeal brands and sound technology companies, which has very little if any overlap with its core audience. I really hope that MaiaSpace employs marketing people who understand and push for an engaging, exciting approach to the company’s communications instead of following the lead of its parent company.
Launch
A pair of launches from Sweden - On November 5 and November 7, DLR launched the suborbital REXUS 27 and REXUS 28 flights from Esrange Space Center. The two missions carried the experiments of five student teams from universities in Switzerland, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Germany. One of the experiments was the Hayabusa-capsule active dynamic re-entry stabilization (HADES) which sought to study the dynamic stability of a re-entry capsule in the atmosphere.
The Kiwis launch a Swedish climate scientist - The OHB Sweden MATS satellite was launched aboard a Rocket Lab Electron on 4 November. Following separation, OHB Sweden successfully acquired the first signals from the satellite through the Swedish Space Cooperation’s ground station in Punta Arenas. MATS is a Swedish science mission to investigate waves in the atmosphere and their impact on the climate. It is financed by the Swedish state through the National Space Agency.
Reunited in orbit - The second satellite built under ESA's Eurostar NEO programme was launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9. The Eutelsat Hotbird 13G is one of an identical pair of satellites developed by Airbus for Eutelsat as part of an ESA Partnership Project. The pair of geostationary satellites will enhance TV broadcasts to homes across Europe, Northern Africa, and the Middle East, replacing three older satellites.
Bob the builder - UK launch facility startup SaxaVord Spaceport released a timelapse of the progress that has been made over the last seven months. The new launch site is located in Unst, one of the North Isles of the Shetland Islands in Scotland. The facility has already attracted several launch providers including Latitude, Astra, Skyrora, and ABL Space.
Funding, agreements, and contracts
More money, more satellites - German thermal remote sensing startup ConstellR has secured $10 million in seed funding led by Lakestar and VSsquared. The round included participation from early and new supports FTTF, IQT, Amathaon Capital, Natural Ventures, EIT Food, OHB Venture Capital, Next Humanity, and Seraphim. The company will utilize the funding to develop its first two satellites, conclude its existing pilot programs and develop its processing platform.
A step closer to tracking pesky tiny space debris - UK-based space situation awareness startup ODIN Space has been awarded a Fast Start: Innovation grant from Innovate UK. The grant will allow ODIN to accelerate the development of the first sensor in the company’s space situation awareness network. The startup aims to launch the first service capable of detecting sub-centimetre debris, a category of space debris that cannot be tracked by traditional methods.
The more space tugs, the merrier - French space logistics company Exotrail has signed a multi-launch agreement with Germany’s Isar Aerospace. The agreement will see Exotrail spacevan space tugs launch aboard several Spectrum missions between 2024 and 2029. The Exotrail flights will launch from both Andøya Space in Norway and the Guiana Space Center in French Guiana, delivering spacevan space tugs packed with customer payloads into LEO and GTO orbits.
Let’s hope carbon fiber is better than wax and feathers - AraineGroup has received approval from ESA to continue the development of the PHOEBUS super-light carbon composite upper stage for Ariane 6. This new agreement is worth 50 million euros and builds on previous ESA contracts signed in May 2019 and May 2021. The PHOEBUS upper stage is a demonstrator of the ICARUS upper stage that will boost the payload capacities of the two Ariane 6 variants.
Put another space tug on the barbie - Australian space logistics startup Space Machines Company has signed of memorandum of understanding with Arianespace to define the terms and conditions of possible future cooperation. If you think this sounds vague, you’re not the only one. The brass tacks are the two are exploring the possibility of including the Space Machines space tug as part of the Arianespace offering to enable the launch provider to offer last-mile transportation services to its customers.
Announcements and reports
The Scots come to Germany - Scottish satellite builder Alba Orbital announced that it had successfully completed its first satellite ground station, Alba Connect Node 1. The ground station is located near Berlin, Germany. The station is off the grid, relying on solar panels, batteries, and a cell network to keep itself running. The installation does look a lot like a trailer with a big satellite attached to it, but one step at a time.
Austerity hangs over ESA - According to Thomas Jan reporting for Handelsblatt, the German Ministry of Economic Affairs to the Economic Committee of the Bundestag has proposed contributing almost €2.8 billion to ESA by 2025. This figure represents a 15 percent cut in funding from one of the agency’s largest contributors. The proposal has received pushback from industry representatives in Germany.
Slow and steady wins the race - Germany’s EnMap hyperspectral satellite has entered routine operations after seven months of calibration that was required to ensure the primary instrument was operating optimally. Researchers from around the world can now submit their requests for data gathered by the satellite to DLR.
Andrew Parsonson has been reporting on space and spaceflight for over five years. He has contributed to SpaceNews and, most recently, the daily Payload newsletter. In late 2021 he launched European Spaceflight as a way to promote the continent's excellence in space. This newsletter is an extension of that mission.
If you’d like to get in touch to discuss European space or anything really, you can connect with Andrew on Twitter or send me an email to andrewp@europeanspaceflight.com.