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WASHINGTON — The European Space Agency will soon select the finalists for a competition intended to support the development of new launch vehicles by European companies.
During a panel discussion at the Paris Air Show June 17, ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher said that the agency received 12 proposals for the European Launcher Challenge, a program to award launch contracts to new vehicles as well as fund demonstrations of upgraded vehicles. Companies are eligible for up to 169 million euros ($199 million) each.
Those 12 proposals are currently going through technical reviews by ESA, which will select a group of them for funding consideration at the ESA ministerial conference in late November.
“It will be that not all 12 of these proposals will go the ministerial,” he said. “I cannot predict how many will be left after this evaluation period and therefore how many will go to the ministerial.”
ESA is using an alternative approach to funding the European Launcher Challenge than its traditional georeturn approach, where member states subscribe to programs and are guaranteed contracts in amounts proportional to the funding they provide. Instead, ESA plans to select a group of companies, after which member states at the ministerial will determine which ones they want to fund.
“Quite a few member states are preparing their decisions in case their candidates are selected as being brought forward for funding at the ministerial conference,” he said. “If you ask me the number that will go to the ministerial, it’s too early to say, but we should know in a couple of weeks.”
Toni Tolker-Nielsen, ESA’s director of space transportation, said after the panel that he expected the downselected companies to be announced as soon as July 7.
ESA has not disclosed the companies that did submit European Launcher Challenge proposals, although some companies widely believed to be participating have been announcing milestones in recent weeks to emphasize the progress they are making.
MaiaSpace, a French company developing a launch vehicle with a reusable first stage, hosted several French government ministers at its facilities outside Paris June 13. There, the company announced its intent to build a 10,000-square-meter factory there for producing the vehicle.
Yohann Leroy, chief executive of MaiaSpace, said at the Paris Air Forum earlier the same day that there was demand for small launch vehicles despite competition from rideshare services that have stymied other vehicle developers. Dedicated small launchers are often compared to taxis while rideshares are linked to buses.
“The market for microlaunchers exist. There are a lot of people who are interested in a taxi, provided the taxi can be the price of the bus,” he said. “If you want to succeed in launching a taxi, you have to make the price close to the price of the bus.”
Some companies have hinted they are interested in using the European Launcher Challenge to support work on larger vehicles. “Microlaunchers can never compete in price per kilo” against larger vehicles, said Miguel Bello Mora, chairman of the board of Orbex, said at the same Paris Air Forum panel.
That company is working on its Prime small launcher but has announced plans for a larger vehicle, Proxima, even before the first Prime launch. “We believe there is a gap and there is room for several players,” he said. “Medium size is where we target.”
Not everyone in the European small launch vehicle industry is satisfied with the competition. “It’s a pretty weird program,” said Stanislas Maximin, executive chairman of Latitude, in an interview. He said he felt the competition was either a way to help companies already far advanced in technology and fundraising or those who have struggled to raise private financing.
Nonetheless, he said Latitude submitted a proposal for the competition. “It will help us improve the launch system,” he said, such as increasing the payload capacity of its Zephyr rocket from 200 to 300 kilograms. “It allows us to go faster.”
Latitude, based in France, is also using the competition to expand its presence in Europe. “What it helps us to do is be more European. We’re building relationships with European partners,” he said.
While he said he was concerned the program will be used by some countries to support companies that don’t necessarily need such assistance, “we feel like we are in a good position to win it.”
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