A New European Space Startup is Making Good News

There's a recent startup in the EU that's making some good headlines and good progress toward goals that make sense.  The company is called The Exploration Company and it was founded by an economist, Hélène Huby, and of all the possible backgrounds for someone who starts a space transport company, that could be the least expected.  

An economist by training, Huby joined the European aerospace firm Airbus in 2013, working various jobs, including space strategy, before becoming the company's vice president for the Orion spacecraft's service module. As part of NASA's Artemis Program to return humans to the Moon, Europe is building the service module that provides power and propulsion to the Orion capsule.

I think it's a good sign that she thought the program was frustrating.

Why? Because the service module was essentially based on 20-year-old technology, and it wouldn't be reused. In some sense, working on the service module felt like looking into the past rather than working toward the future.

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. "I have a huge admiration for what SpaceX has done," she said.

Huby recognizes that SpaceX is the only company in the Western World that's providing human spaceflight. With that, she realizes that it seems entirely possible that Starliner will never be good enough to be certified or could simply be dropped by Boeing. The only other space program working on manned spaceflight is India's, which is farther behind than Boeing, but it's unclear whether the Indian government will allow the Gaganyaan vehicle to provide launch services for non-Indian customers.

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.

"I know it's super hard, and I know it was crazy," Huby said. "But I wanted to try."

The story of The Exploration Company is rather remarkable. Huby founded the company in August 2021 with $50,000 in the bank and a 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. All told they have raised $230 million and have already had a prototype capsule launched. 

Her company has already flown a mission, the "Bikini" reentry demonstrator, on the debut flight of the Ariane 6 rocket this last summer. The small capsule was intended to demonstrate the company's reentry technology. Unfortunately, the rocket's upper stage failed on its deorbit burn, so the Bikini capsule remains stuck in space.

Undeterred by that Ariane failure ruining their mission, they've already built a second demonstration vehicle named Mission Possible that will carry payloads for a good sized crowd ("over a dozen") of customers. Mission Possible will launch on SpaceX's Transporter 14 mission, currently estimated to launch next July.

Hélène Huby, chief executive officer of The Exploration Co., during an interview in London, UK, on Friday, March 8, 2024. Credit: Betty Laura Zapata/Bloomberg via Getty Images

In addition to this, the company is working on development of a Cargo craft called Nyx, essentially compatible with the Cargo Dragon and the others that dock at the ISS. It's planned to be the same size as Cargo Dragon and reusable as well.  Unfortunately they don't expect to be ready to fly until 2028, by which time there won't be many more flights to the ISS, but it's expected that newer Space Stations will use the same docking port design. Further down the calendar is a manned version of the Nyx (Crew Nyx?).