Decisive year for Isar Aerospace. Five years after its creation in 2018, the German start-up will take off its Spectrum rocket from the Norwegian base of Andoya. This flight, expected in the second half of the year, will be the first of a small European private launcher capable of putting satellites into low orbit, 500 kilometers from the Earth.
To prepare for this launch and increase its production rates, the Bavarian firm announced on Tuesday March 28 that it had collected 165 million dollars (152 million euros) from investors, which in fact, according to it, “the largest space technology fundraiser in the world”.
This record financial contribution illustrates the change underway in Europe, where the manufacture of rockets has so far been the initiative of twenty-two States, brought together in the European Space Agency (ESA) according to their access policy to space. From there were born the Ariane and Vega rocket programs.
New needs
The upheaval came from the United States a decade ago, when Elon Musk’s SpaceX successfully orbited a first telecommunications satellite and slashed launch prices with its Falcon rocket, ending the public duopoly. European-Russian Ariane and Proton on the civilian telecommunications satellite market.
A market which has also undergone profound transformation, with the development of high-speed Internet, 5G, mobile telephony, the cloud and applications requiring almost instantaneous responses, whether in transport, finance, defence, connected objects or video games. Low orbit then appeared to be the best location to respond almost instantly to these new needs. Hence the development of the constellations.
With manufacturing costs falling, private initiatives have multiplied to design increasingly miniaturized satellites and adapted rockets. Starting in the United States, the wave of new space quickly spread to Europe. A dozen start-ups, mainly in France and Germany, are developing new launchers to deploy small, medium or micro-sized satellites as well as their constellations.
Unprecedented availability
Created by students at the Technical University of Munich, Isar Aerospace, which today employs three hundred people, is the most advanced in this field. “We are neither in the market for large launchers nor for very small rockets”, says David Kownator, its financial director. With its 27 meters high and 2 meters in diameter, Spectrum is indeed half the size of an Ariane 5 or a Falcon 9.
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