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The European Launcher Challenge is aimed at supporting startups such as Isar Aerospace that is poised for its inaugural launch.
The European Space Agency (ESA) has formally kicked off the European Launcher Challenge, a keystone effort to diversify homegrown rocket options.
The so-called invitation to tender, released March 24, offers winners up to €169 million ($183 million) to support their work, ESA said. There are no minimum or maximum number of bidders ESA is stipulating.
“An increased intra-European competitive environment in space transportation services is an incentive to accelerate the pace of innovation, foster the emergence of a greater diversity of services and offer more attractive prices thanks to optimized manufacturing and operations costs,” ESA has said.
Bidders will have to co-fund the project. The ESA support is intended to allow companies to demonstrate and fly their services and give them the ability to bid on institutional launch service contracts.
Europe for years has relied on a few government-backed rocket programs, such as the Ariane and Vega family of systems, and is trying to aid startups that have now come onto the scene. The new program is intended to provide for the incumbents to reposition their business, ESA argues.
ESA is giving companies about six weeks to respond to its solicitation and identify eligible candidate projects over the following months. It plans to submit concrete funding requests to a meeting of ESA member state ministers in November, when plans for the next three-year spending period are due to be formalized. Companies are being asked to co-fund any endeavor.
Contracts will not be placed until after the ministerial meeting in November once financial contributions have been committed, Toni Tolker Nielsen, ESA’s acting director for space transportation, said last week.
The goal to run the European Launcher Challenge was announced in Seville, Spain, in November 2023.
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