ESA to expand its program designed to encourage its commercial rocket industry
The European Space Agency (ESA) today announced it is expanding its “European Flight Ticket” program, designed to encourage its commercial rocket industry, by offering more rocket startups the opportunity to join.
The European Space Agency and the European Commission are inviting launch service providers across Europe to apply to join the European Flight Ticket Initiative. The objective of the Flight Ticket Initiative is to strengthen Europe’s access to space. European launch service providers compete to deliver missions for In-orbit Demonstration and Validation satellite (IOD/IOV) which test new space technologies in orbit. To support this, ESA launched a new two-part call for proposals.
To participate in the Flight Ticket Initiative, a launch service operator must first be awarded a framework contract. This allows them to compete for future missions under the Initiative. Avio, Isar Aerospace, PLD Space, and Rocket Factory Augsburg hold such contracts with ESA, following a first selection in 2024.
ESA and the European Commission are now expanding this pool by inviting additional European providers to apply. Companies that expect to be ready to launch before 2028 are encouraged to take part.
The program is also requesting bids for a new round of launch contracts. All bids are due by July 17, 2026.
The five European companies listed above are all either already operational (Avio), or hope to complete their first launch this year. There are several other European startups (Maiaspace, Latitude, HyImpulse) that are not far behind, and will likely bid.
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I don’t have great expectations for how well any bureaucratically-led initiative to goose a truly commercial European launch market into existence will turn out, but at least there seems to be a growing acceptance that the status quo wasn’t getting them where they wanted to go. The Europeans might just get themselves to a point where multiple launch companies constitute a sheltered market for launches of payloads of European origin – especially of national or EU government origin. But with the partially-reusable Falcon 9 now entering its second decade of service and fully-reusable designs such as Stoke Space’s Nova and SpaceX’s Starship about to debut in commercial service it is problematical just how much business of a non-European origin there will be for even a stable of semi-reusable small and medium launchers – and the Euros are some years away, at best, from even having that on offer.
Europe doesn’t want to go to space–it looks like they’d rather be over here.
As for Iran, I wish Trump would have a secret program to drop an asteroid atop them.