As Europe flounders in space, a rising French star may show the way

All of a sudden, French entrepreneur Hèlene Huby is seemingly everywhere.

This week she is serving as one of two envoys, alongside astronaut Thomas Pesquet, at a high-profile International Space Summit convened by French President Emmanuel Macron. The government’s website for the event describes her as chief executive of “the fastest-growing space company in Europe.”

Also this week, that firm, The Exploration Company, announced a significant capital raise of $450 million in Series C funding. Although not spectacular by the standards of some US space businesses, this is the largest-ever Series C funding round by a Europe-based space company, and likely the largest funding round ever raised by a female-led company in Europe.

And Huby has arrived on center stage in the European space community at a time when there are increasingly urgent questions about the ability of the continent to navigate a future in space as commercial startups in the United States and China race ahead.

A lack of ambition

So many of the biggest European space projects of this decade feel dated. The flagship rocket, the Ariane 6 vehicle, is flying. But its costs are high, it is fully expendable, and its flight rate of 10 launches a year feels antediluvian in the megaconstellation era. Europe’s response to SpaceX’s Starlink constellation is a project called IRIS², which is already years behind schedule and has seen its estimated cost balloon to more than $15 billion before much metal has even been cut.

From civil projects, such as space-based data, to military applications, Europe seems to be fighting a losing battle on almost every front. All of this makes Huby refreshing because she is honest about the situation and has big ambitions. She seems to be one of the only people in Europe who recognizes these problems, speaks publicly about them, and is trying to do something about it.

After working for the traditional European space industry for about a decade, at heavyweights Airbus and ArianeGroup, Huby founded The Exploration Company five years ago. Initially the company focused on building a relatively small cargo capsule to deliver supplies to, and return from, low-Earth orbit. This work has resulted in the Nyx spacecraft, which is now undergoing NASA safety reviews for a cargo mission to the International Space Station as early as November 2028.

But Huby’s bigger passion has always been human spaceflight, and her 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.

Her work in this area could be rewarded in Europe, where there is growing frustration with the United States as a reliable partner in space and a desire to have 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. The Exploration Company, which is already deep into development of a cargo spacecraft, would instantly become one of the frontrunners in a competition to provide crewed service.

Not just spacecraft

As if a cargo and crew spacecraft were not ambitious enough, The Exploration Company also recently announced development work on “Storm,” a full-flow staged combustion engine fueled by liquid oxygen and methane with approximately 400,000 pounds of thrust. This would be used to power a reusable rocket intended to launch 40 metric tons in reusable mode, and 60 tons in expendable mode. An aggressive timeline for the rocket’s development, she said, is 2033.

“If Europe wants to stay relevant—we will not be relevant without a massive rocket at a massive cadence,” Huby said during a teleconference with reporters on Tuesday. “And to do that we need a massive engine, and right now this is something we just do not have in Europe.”

The Ariane 6 rocket, by contrast, has a maximum lift capacity of about 20 tons. European officials, of course, are talking about a successor to Ariane 6. It may be reusable. It may be more powerful, but largely, it is all talk. Huby’s company is attempting to take tangible steps toward that goal. She is pushing to test-fire a prototype of the Storm engine by late 2028.

Huby is cognizant of reality and recognizes there could be delays in these timelines. Money will always be an issue. The funding round announced this week is a down payment on development for a crewed spacecraft and a large rocket, but the cost of each of these programs will run into the billions of dollars.

Seizing the moment

“The fundraise we have done right now is not sufficient to build the massive rocket we have in mind, so there will be another fundraise,” she said. “Right now we’re going to be very, very focused on the execution. We must dock with the space station, with the capsule, as fast as possible. We must build this rocket engine and de-risk it as fast as possible. I think once one of these two milestones is achieved, we’ll be talking fundraise again.”

Critics may look at Huby and her company and say that is a lot of big talk for a company that only has a single, partial success in spaceflight to its credit. And sure, it is. But that’s kind of the point. So much of the spaceflight community in Europe has been concerned with either the large aerospace primes seeking government handouts to protect their turf or small launch startups. There has been a stunning lack of big, visionary thinking.

Few people on the continent seem to recognize that multibillion investments by US companies such as SpaceX, Blue Origin, and Amazon in space, and their many imitators in China, are radically transforming spaceflight. As the world changes, Huby does not seem willing to stand on the sidelines in Europe and bemoan capitalism in space. Rather, she seems to be saying it is not too late for Europe to seize the day.

“We need to have European politicians who are ambitious,” she said. “Entrepreneurs cannot do this alone. We need to be backed by the politicians and by the European Space Agency. But we have to start by achieving the crazy targets that we’ve set up for ourselves. That will give trust to others to believe in what we’re doing.”