Astronauts in orbit: Europe at a crossroads for space transportation

The Exploration Company has unveiled a concept for a crewed spacecraft, something the Old Continent has never had. Then there are Thales Alenia Space, ArianeGroup and PLD Space. At the Ministerial meeting in November, the European Space Agency will have to decide whether to finally take this step

BY EMILIO COZZI AND MATTEO MARINI

Europe must act. The opportunity to do so will come this autumn, in Bremen, when the ministers of the 23 member countries of the European Space Agency will gather to choose which space programs to undertake and how much to fund them.

It’s not out of the question that this will go down in history as the Ministerial meeting where the Old Continent decided to equip itself with a space transportation system for its own astronauts. That is the hope driving the work of the Franco-Italo-German company The Exploration Company, as expressed by Victor Maier, head of activities for Germany and Central Europe.

At the Paris Air Show in Le Bourget, The Exploration Company presented the project aimed at realizing this ambition: Nyx, a prototype cargo capsule for transporting goods into orbit. However, the model boasts features unnecessary for a standard cargo vehicle: windows, life support systems, touchscreen controls, and seats.

Two days later, also at Le Bourget, Esa, Thales Alenia Space, and Blue Origin signed a Memorandum of Understanding to “promote and facilitate commercial and industrial advancements in the field of low Earth orbit space exploration.” Jeff Bezos’ aerospace company, Blue Origin, is preparing to build a new commercial space station, Orbital Reef, one of several successors to the ISS currently under development. Thales Alenia Space itself is involved in its construction at its facilities in Turin.

ESA also signed an agreement with Vast Space, which plans to launch the small Haven-1 station by the end of the year. In other words, in the near future, a physical “place” in orbit will be guaranteed by private outposts. That’s why ESA – like Nasa – is working to ensure a destination for European astronauts, suitable for training and continuing microgravity research. In many ways, this too is a historic moment.

True enough, but with what means will we get up there?

From Cargo to Crew

In 2024, the European Space Agency launched a call for proposals titled Leo Cargo Return Service, a program aimed at developing a vehicle capable of resupplying future space stations and then returning to Earth. The initiative isn’t limited to cargo capsules; equipping these vehicles with a heat shield, enhancing their ability to bring back materials and experiments, and ensuring they can withstand the extreme temperatures and stresses of atmospheric reentry is also a concrete first step toward a human-rated transportation system.

Two very different players are in the running: The Exploration Company, with the cargo version of its Nyx capsule, and Thales Alenia Space.

The former has already raised over €230 million, almost entirely from private investors, and launched a demonstrator aboard a SpaceX flight that took off on June 23 from the Vandenberg base in California, in what they called “Mission Possible.” The main objectives were data collection, thermal shield testing, and improvement of control systems. The mission was a “partial success,” as the company stated shortly after splashdown: the capsule “powered the payloads nominally in orbit. Mission Possible carried about fifteen experiments, technology demonstrators, and student projects. It stabilized after separation from the launcher, re-entered, and re-established communications after the reentry blackout.” Then something went wrong: “Afterward, it encountered a problem, based on our current understanding, and we lost communications a few minutes before splashdown.”

That’s the purpose of testing, of course, and the company is highly motivated to continue development of a fully operational capsule, especially if the Esa Ministerial unlocks an additional €200 million, with the goal of launching a full inaugural mission by 2028.

Thales Alenia Space is working on its own proposal, drawing on its experience with the IXV vehicles (the unmanned mini shuttle that flew only once), Space Rider, and the Atv. The latter is considered, within Esa circles, as a major missed opportunity: Europe didn’t take the extra step to equip a reliable Iss resupply vehicle with a thermal shield. The last ATV flight was ten years ago; afterward, Europe continued relying on Russian Soyuz capsules and, since 2020, on SpaceX’s (Crew) Dragons.

Beyond Nyx: Susie and Lince

Alongside Nyx, there are other European projects hinting at astronaut transportation. The most ambitious is Susie (Smart Upper Stage for Innovative Exploration), the reusable upper stage announced by ArianeGroup. Presented in 2022, Susie is designed to fly atop an Ariane 6 rocket and has been conceived from the start to also carry humans. It’s a sort of miniature European shuttle, fully reusable, with vertical landing and advanced safety systems. The company has already conducted initial feasibility studies, but for now, there’s no concrete flight plan.

Another name to watch is Pld Space, a young Spanish company carving out a significant role on the European stage. Following the success of the first launch of the mini rocket Miura 1, the company is now developing Miura 5, a reusable orbital launcher, another first for Europe, intended for the commercial market, along with increasingly powerful “Next” launchers. These would eventually carry the Lince capsule for astronauts, which is targeted for a debut as early as 2030, the same timeline stated by ArianeGroup.

Of course, human missions make up only a small part of space activities, which in many respects cannot be automated or delegated to machines, even though robots will take on an increasing share of the workload.

Naturally, it’s not just a matter of practicality, prestige and politics are involved too. Astronauts in space represent feats, records, flags. We are human beings, after all, we live on stories, the kind that leave a mark in the memory of new generations. One day, they will be the ones to provide the engineers and scientists ready to drive progress and change the world.