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Currently, only two companies provide cargo delivery to and from the ISS, and both are based in the United States. Exploration companywhich operates out of Germany, France and Italy, is looking to change that: it has just closed a major funding round to continue its mission of building Europe’s first reusable space capsule.
The $160 million Series B round will fund the continued development of the Nyx spacecraft, which will be able to carry 3,000 kilograms of cargo to and from Earth. The company, founded three years ago by aeronautical engineers Helene Hoppe, Sebastian Reichtadt and Pierre Fine, aims to conduct Nyx’s first flight to and from the International Space Station in 2028.
“We are the first company in the world where this is mainly funded by private investors,” Hobby said in a recent interview. This is in contrast to SpaceX’s Dragon capsule, which it said was “funded primarily by NASA.”
The new funding, led by Balderton Capital and Plural, brings the startup’s total funding to date to more than $208 million. The Series B also included participation from Bessemer Venture Partners, NGP Capital, and two European sovereign funds, French Tech Souveraineté and DeepTech & Climate Fonds.
“We have been able to deliver on our promises in the past three years,” Hobby said. “We were able to achieve our cash target throughout the quarter… and investors saw that we were able to deliver on time, cost and quality.”
The startup has achieved success with the European Space Agency (ESA), which recognized the need to enhance local space launch and transportation capabilities. The exploration company was awarded a study contract worth about 25 million euros ($27 million) to develop cargo return services earlier this year. This contract will run until 2026, with additional competitive contract opportunities expected after that. The European Space Agency aims to launch at least one capsule to the International Space Station in 2028.
The contract structure, called the LEO Cargo Return Service Contract, is similar to NASA’s Commercial Orbital Return Transportation Services program that the agency launched in 2006. That program has led to multibillion-dollar transportation contracts for SpaceX and Orbital Sciences Corporation (now Northrop Grumman).
It’s a promising start, but it’s also equally promising for the exploration company on the commercial side. About 90% of the startup’s $770 million contract backlog came from private station developers Vast, Axiom Space and Starlab. According to recent reports.
The exploration company’s first test vehicle was launched on the maiden flight of the Ariane 6 rocket this summer, although it was not deployed due to a problem with the rocket’s upper stage. The second sub-scale demonstration mission, called Mission Possible, is scheduled to launch aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 next year.
“I have great respect for what SpaceX has been able to accomplish,” Hobby said. “We are trying to learn as much as we can from that, and we are inspired by what they have achieved. But we also believe that the world needs more competition and we want to build an alternative step by step. We are very aware that we are late, that we are much smaller, etcetera, but we have to start.” “.
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