The Exploration Company, the French firm led by entrepreneur Hèlene Huby, has announced a Series C funding round of EUR 387 million (around £334 million), the largest such round ever raised by a Europe-based space company and likely the largest ever secured by a female-led business in Europe.
Huby has arrived on the European space stage at a moment of increasingly urgent questions about the continent’s ability to compete as commercial startups in the United States and China race ahead. This week she served as one of two envoys, alongside astronaut Thomas Pesquet, at an International Space Summit convened by French President Emmanuel Macron. The government’s website for the event described her as chief executive of the fastest-growing space company in Europe.
A question of ambition
Many of Europe’s largest space projects this decade feel dated. The flagship Ariane 6 rocket is flying, but its costs are high, it is fully expendable, and its rate of 10 launches a year appears modest in the megaconstellation era. Europe’s answer to SpaceX’s Starlink, a project called IRIS², is already years behind schedule, with estimated costs rising to more than EUR 13 billion (about £11 billion) before much construction has taken place.
From civil projects such as space-based data to military applications, Europe faces difficulties on numerous fronts. Huby has been open about the situation while setting out broad ambitions, speaking publicly about the challenges and working to address them.
Cargo, crew and independent access
After roughly a decade working for the traditional European space industry at Airbus and ArianeGroup, Huby founded The Exploration Company five years ago. The firm initially focused on building a relatively small cargo capsule to deliver supplies to, and return from, low-Earth orbit. That work has produced the Nyx spacecraft, now undergoing NASA safety reviews for a cargo mission to the International Space Station as early as November 2028.
Huby’s greater interest has always been human spaceflight, and the company has begun preliminary work on a crew spacecraft that could serve either the International Space Station or private space stations under development by US companies.
The work could prove timely. There is growing frustration in Europe about the reliability of the United States as a partner in space, and a desire for independent access to orbit for European astronauts. The leader of the European Space Agency, Josef Aschbacher, said this week he hopes to receive a mandate from European leaders to develop this capability by the end of the year. Given its progress on a cargo spacecraft, The Exploration Company would immediately become one of the frontrunners in any competition to provide a crewed service.
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Image: arstechnica.com
