Building Europe’s way into space – The Exploration Company’s sustainable approach

It was very clear to me Europe had no homegrown way to carry cargo and people to space stations in Earth and lunar orbit, and no credible plan on the horizon. That gap demanded action. I founded The Exploration Company to give Europe that capability – and a seat at the table. I officially left Airbus in April, the company was created in July.

We design for interoperability instead of lock‑in.

First of all: Nyx is the first space capsule going to a space station to be significantly privately funded. We raised private capital and only later used nations as anchor clients. Next, Nyx is launcher-agnostic. We can fly on any heavy launcher in the world.

That allows customers to use their national assets when it makes sense. We can fly with American launchers if carrying NASA cargo, if we bring Japanese cargo we can use a Japanese launcher and if we bring Indian cargo we can use an Indian launcher. We take an open approach. We design for interoperability instead of lock-in.

We focus on government space agencies, such as the European Space Agency, and commercial entities, such as commercial space stations, through partners like Axiom Space and Vast. Our main business is servicing space stations. Most of our missions are focusing on that, because there is clearly a cargo need. Also, just in the past 5 years, we had an 80 percent increase in crew missions. There is a huge demand for more and more astronauts being flown to space, more activities happening in space.

So, what we’re proposing to Europe is the commercial space model that has worked in the United States over the past 15 to 20 years: agencies act as anchor customers, run open competitions, pay fixed prices against milestones, and buy services instead of owning hardware. This structure crowds in private capital, rewards execution, and scales with flight rate – which is how you drive unit costs down over time.

ESA has already taken an important first step on this path with its commercial cargo‑return initiative; the next step is multi-year, multi-vendor service contracts that are launcher-agnostic and interoperable with European standards. Combine that with cross-border industrial participation and stable export regulations, this framework would allow a European space company to operate sustainably and profitably while strengthening Europe’s sovereign capability.

We plan missions in full alignment with European Space Agency’s debris-mitigation policy, which sets strict criteria for safe re-entry – such as a maximum casualty risk of 1 in 10,000. We are currently validating our approach through NASA’s and ESA’s ISS safety processes for logistics flights to the International Space Station.

While there is no single solution to the orbital‑debris challenge, our combination of re-usability, in‑orbit refuelling, and controlled end‑of‑life operations helps reduce the likelihood that our missions contribute to the debris field while aligning with tighter mitigation rules.

We literally build across nations: teams in Germany, France, Italy, Luxembourg, USA and the UAE. That footprint lets us combine the best talent, best suppliers, meet multiple regulatory regimes, and fly with partners where they are. It is also a signal of how we want space to work: shared standards, open interfaces, and services that are interoperable rather than locked to one country or one launcher. In a tense geopolitical environment, this approach reduces single-country dependencies while keeping space open to collaboration. That is how The Exploration Company operates.

We bring the launch capability to as many nations as possible – and with it, the ability to fly.

Our mission is to build space vehicles across nations to foster peace and cooperation in space. What makes us really unique? For me, it’s something very tangible: we build across nations, keep it open and we lower barriers so more people can send experiments and payloads into space.

My dream is that in ten years we take off from Kourou with our rockets – topped by a crew capsule. We land in Australia and take off again, then we land in India and take off from there again. We really scale the infrastructure of launch. We bring this launch capability to as many nations as possible – and with it, the ability to fly.