OHB joins Dassault’s project to build a reusable mini-shuttle
Vortex-S with service module attached. Click for original image.
The German aerospace company OHB has now joined with France’s Dassault Aviation in its project to build Vortex, a reusable mini-shuttle that could be used to supply cargo to the future commercial space stations presently under development.
An initial subscale demonstrator of the spaceplane, called the VORTEX-D, is being developed by the company with support from the French Ministry of the Armed Forces. During a 25 June 2025 hearing of the French National Assembly’s Committee on National Defence and the Armed Forces, it was revealed that the demonstrator is expected to be launched in 2028 and has a total project cost of €70 million, with Dassault providing more than half of the funding and the remainder coming from the French government.
The VORTEX-S is expected to follow the VORTEX-D demonstrator. This larger, more complex variant will be developed in partnership with OHB following the finalisation of the 11 May agreement, as the companies seek to secure ESA backing for the project. According to the release announcing the partnership, discussions are also underway with other major European space companies to “expand the team.”
Dassault will remain the lead contractor, building the mini-shuttle. OHB will build the service module. The hope is that later versions of Vortex could also ferry crews to and from space.
This project started in 2023, and initially hoped to do the first test mission to ISS in 2026. That test flight is now targeting 2029, with later missions slipping beyond 2031 and now targeting missions to one of the new stations replacing ISS.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Vortex-S with service module attached. Click for original image.
The German aerospace company OHB has now joined with France’s Dassault Aviation in its project to build Vortex, a reusable mini-shuttle that could be used to supply cargo to the future commercial space stations presently under development.
An initial subscale demonstrator of the spaceplane, called the VORTEX-D, is being developed by the company with support from the French Ministry of the Armed Forces. During a 25 June 2025 hearing of the French National Assembly’s Committee on National Defence and the Armed Forces, it was revealed that the demonstrator is expected to be launched in 2028 and has a total project cost of €70 million, with Dassault providing more than half of the funding and the remainder coming from the French government.
The VORTEX-S is expected to follow the VORTEX-D demonstrator. This larger, more complex variant will be developed in partnership with OHB following the finalisation of the 11 May agreement, as the companies seek to secure ESA backing for the project. According to the release announcing the partnership, discussions are also underway with other major European space companies to “expand the team.”
Dassault will remain the lead contractor, building the mini-shuttle. OHB will build the service module. The hope is that later versions of Vortex could also ferry crews to and from space.
This project started in 2023, and initially hoped to do the first test mission to ISS in 2026. That test flight is now targeting 2029, with later missions slipping beyond 2031 and now targeting missions to one of the new stations replacing ISS.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Midget shuttles launched on expendable rockets are not going to be a cost-competitive solution to commercial LEO space station cargo and/or crew logistics. This project, as with most such previously abandoned equivalent European projects, is dependent on government development funding, has already schedule-slipped rightward by multiple years and seems doomed to continue that slide until it, like all of its notional predecessors, is finally cancelled. The Europeans simply lack the institutional speed required to keep up with US private sector space efforts.