ESA Selects Companies for Commercial Cargo Service to ISS

TapTechNews May 23rd news, the European Space Agency (ESA) announced that it has selected ExplorationCompany and Thales Alenia Space to provide commercial cargo services to the International Space Station, which is regarded as the first step in creating a European version of SpaceX.

This move indicates that the ESA is following the strategy that the US NASA has adopted in the past nearly 20 years, that is, purchasing flight services from commercial aerospace companies instead of commissioning the development of rockets and spacecraft.

According to public information, The ExplorationCompany is a Franco-German joint venture start-up founded three years ago, while Thales Alenia Space is a Franco-Italian joint venture space system supplier, which is a new company formed after Thales Group acquired two joint ventures of Alcatel.

The two companies will each receive an initial fund of 25 million euros (TapTechNews note: currently about 196 million Chinese yuan) from the ESA to create a commercially viable near-Earth orbit cargo service by 2028. The second round of financing is expected to reach several hundred thousand euros, and the specific details will be decided at the next ESA ministerial-level meeting to be held in 2025.

ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher said, The signing of the low-Earth orbit cargo service contract shows how the ESA modernizes to meet the needs of the new era of the space economy.

In fact, since Josef took office, he has been promoting a more commercial approach to help cultivate commercial companies in the European space sector and reduce costs. The ESA also hopes that these vehicles can be used for manned space flights or lunar missions.

We hope to have scalable capabilities that can both send people to low Earth orbit and bring goods back to Earth from the lunar orbit module, said Daniel Neuenschwander, Director of the ESA's Directorate of Human and Robotic Exploration.