ELC 25 Industry Day

European Space Transportation Context

For more than 40 years, Europe has been a single-supplier market in terms of launch services, with launch-related capabilities being developed under public lead and launched from Europe’s Spaceport in French Guiana. To date, several privately developed European space transportation services, raising significant private investments, are being developed and are planned to become operational in the short- to mid-term.

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 optimised manufacturing and operations costs.

What is the European Launcher Challenge?

While Europe’s independent access to space will strongly rely on a guaranteed availability of Vega C and Ariane 6 in the coming decade, new European entrants will start introducing and offering launch services to European and worldwide customers within the same period. Europe is entering into a new phase with an upcoming diversification of space transportation services, where established launch service providers will co-exist with new ones .

Pursuant to the ESA Council decision on present and future European space transportation, adopted on 6 November 2023 in Seville (the “Seville Resolution”), in parallel to preparing the stabilised exploitations of Ariane 6 and Vega C to guarantee access to space for Europe in the mid-term, ESA is preparing all relevant documentation to submit a proposal for an optional programme relative to be subscribed at the occasion of the ESA Council at ministerial level in 2025 for a challenge among European space transportation solutions.

European space transportation service initiatives will be called upon to demonstrate their ability to develop and fly a capacity to serve mission needs to access space in an incremental stepwise approach in terms of performance and capabilities.

What is the ELC25 Industry Day objective?

With a perspective for an involvement of all ESA Member States and with the objective of strengthening a more diverse European ecosystem, the European Space Agency is inviting all interested and competitive European industries to participate and present their capabilities and capacities. The event will provide unique opportunities to organise B2B meetings among all actors in the value chain, primes and suppliers as well as key institutional stakeholders.