Europe’s Quest for Launch Reusability and Autonomy

Significant Disruption

The ability to access space is no longer a measure of prestige; it’s a measure of economic and strategic power. For decades, rockets were feats of single-use, national-flag-bearing engineering, flown sparingly to place critical assets in orbit. That era is over. A significant disruption, driven by the mastery of reusable launch vehicles, has fundamentally inverted the economics of space. What was once a high-cost, low-frequency endeavor has become a high-volume, competitive commercial market.

Securing Europe’s Future in Space

For Europe, this shift represents both an existential threat and an urgent mandate. Its once-dominant position in the commercial launch market, built on the reliability of the Ariane family, was rapidly eroded by American competitors who didn’t just build better rockets, but created an entirely new business model.

Now, a new race is on. It’s a race not just to reach orbit, but to return from it, to reuse, and to relaunch. This is the story of Europe’s multifaceted and urgent quest to develop its own reusable launchers. It’s a complex picture, involving established industrial giants, government agencies, and a vibrant, chaotic ecosystem of private startups. All are competing against the clock, and against each other, to secure Europe’s future in space.

The Disruption That Changed Orbit

For most of spaceflight history, rockets were treated as disposable. The logic was simple: build a vehicle strong enough to escape Earth’s gravity, and once its job was done, let it fall into the ocean or burn up on reentry. This model was akin to “buying a brand-new airplane for every flight.” It’s an analogy that effectively captures the immense, baked-in expense that defined the first 60 years of space access. This staggering cost, driven by the need to design, build, and test a new vehicle for every single mission, naturally led to a low frequency of launches. Space was a destination for only the most high-value, government-backed, or corporate-sponsored payloads.

This paradigm was shattered by a simple, though radically difficult, idea: what if you could land the rocket and fly it again?

This concept, pioneered and, more importantly, proven commercially by SpaceX, has completely upended the global launch industry. By developing the ability to propulsively land and recover its Falcon 9 first-stage boosters – the most expensive part of the rocket – the company demonstrated that reusability wasn’t just a technical stunt; it was a significant economic weapon.

The numbers are stark. Reusing rocket boosters can slash the cost of a single launch by as much as 70%. The refurbishment cost for a flight-proven booster is estimated to be around 10% of the price of building a new one from scratch. When a single booster is reused 10 times, it can save over $46 million per launch. This is what allowed SpaceX to seize over 60% of the global commercial launch market.

This economic shift creates a powerful new industrial loop. Lower costs enable higher launch frequency. Higher frequency allows for rapid innovation and reliability improvements. SpaceX, for example, can relaunch a Falcon 9 booster in as few as 21 days. This capability doesn’t just make it cheaper to launch existing satellites; it makes it economically feasible to deploy entirely new, large-scale infrastructures in space.

The most potent example is SpaceX’s own Starlink constellation. From January 1 to November 15, 2025, the company has conducted 146 Falcon 9 launches, and more than 100 of those missions have been dedicated to deploying its own Starlink internet satellites. This is a important insight: reusability isn’t just a cheaper way to serve the existing market. It’s a tool so powerful it allows the launch provider to become its own biggest customer, creating new markets that were previously unimaginable. This high-cadence capability, funded by an internal business driver, in turn creates a reliable and frequent “bus to orbit” for smaller satellite companies, further solidifying market control.

This new model also fundamentally changes where the money is spent. The old, expendable model prioritized minimizing the build cost of each simple, single-use rocket. The new, reusable model prioritizes minimizing the cost-per-launch. This requires a massive upfront capital investment in research and development to master incredibly complex technologies, from deep-throttling engines and autonomous guidance systems to lightweight landing legs and heat shields.

Developing a reusable system is estimated to be 30-40% more expensive in R&D than an expendable one. Manufacturing costs are also significantly higher. But these initial costs, once paid, are recouped quickly over just a few flights. This creates an enormous barrier to entry, but the reward for clearing it is near-total market dominance.

This market power also means the cost savings are not always passed directly to the customer. The 70% cost reduction is a saving for the provider. The provider is then able to price its services just low enough to win nearly every contract, capturing the market while maximizing its own profit margins. This sets a brutal, and for now, unbeatable “price-to-beat” that all new European entrants must face.

Reusability also brings significant environmental benefits, a factor of growing importance. An expendable rocket is, by definition, a piece of high-tech machinery designed to be thrown away, contributing to the growing problem of space debris in orbit or polluting the ocean. A reusable system dramatically reduces this waste.

For the rest of the world, especially established players like Europe, the success of the Falcon 9 was a wakeup call. It proved that their old, reliable, and expensive expendable model was now a liability. The market had been permanently altered, and the choice was simple: adapt or become obsolete.

Europe’s Mandate: Strategic Autonomy in the NewSpace Age

Europe’s sudden and intense pursuit of reusability isn’t just about competing for commercial satellite contracts. It’s about a concept that has come to define the continent’s 21st-century policy: “strategic autonomy.”

At its core, strategic autonomy is the ability for Europe to act independently in critical areas, from defense to energy to digital infrastructure. And in the modern world, space is the high-ground upon which all of those other areas depend. It’s a goal of ensuring Europe’s independent access to space, reducing its reliance on external, non-European providers for its most important missions.

The problem is that this independence was slipping away. For decades, Europe had autonomy. Its Ariane launchers, operated by Arianespace from the strategically perfect, equator-adjacent Guiana Space Centre (Kourou), dominated the lucrative market for launching large geostationary (GEO) communication satellites. This location provided a natural performance boost, allowing Arianespace to control up to 60% of this high-margin market.

This dominance was “significantly eroded” by SpaceX. The reusable Falcon 9 didn’t just offer a lower price; it offered it with a reliability and frequency that Arianespace couldn’t match. Europe’s “old autonomy” model, built on a few high-margin GEO launches per year, had been broken by a company that built a LEO-optimized rocket and used it to steal the GEO market.

This economic shock was paired with a geopolitical one. The increasing competition between the US, China, and Russia is “spilling over into space.” Modern defense, from combat aircraft to remotely-piloted drones, is entirely dependent on satellite constellations for navigation, intelligence, and communication. Future European defense programs will rely on satellite constellations for enhanced data, positioning, and command and control. Without a guaranteed, independent, and affordable way to launch, maintain, and replace these assets, a continent’s security is effectively held hostage by foreign providers.

This has left Europe in a difficult, two-part bind.

1. It must guarantee immediate access to space for its institutional payloads, like the Galileo navigation system and the Copernicus Earth-observation satellites. This is the “old autonomy” problem.
2. It must develop a commercially competitive launcher for the 2030s to have any share of the future space economy. This is the “new autonomy” problem.

Europe’s solution to the first problem is the new, expendable Ariane 6 and Vega-C rockets. These are vital stop-gaps. The successful launch of Ariane 6 was a major milestone, returning Europe to full autonomy. But even as Ariane 6 successfully completed its first flights, it was clear to everyone that it was a 2020s rocket based on a 2010s design philosophy, entering a market already dominated by 2030s-era reusability.

Europe finds itself in a “reusability trap” of its own making. This wasn’t a failure of engineering, but a failure of strategic market vision. European decision-makers had recognized decades ago that reusability was only economically viable with a robust market for launches to Low Earth Orbit (LEO). Lacking such a market, and content with its profitable GEO niche, Europe chose not to prioritize reusability. The United States, facing the same facts, made the opposite choice: it created a LEO market through government programs that actively nurtured private companies like SpaceX. When SpaceX used its LEO-optimized reusable rocket to steal the GEO market, Europe was left with neither a competitive launcher nor its old, protected market.

The solution to the “new autonomy” problem is where reusability comes in. In late 2025, European Commissioner Andrius Kubilius stated the imperative plainly, highlighting the importance of moving “towards reusable systems” for Europe to fully benefit from the “coming space revolution.”

This push is now being codified into law. On June 25, 2025, the European Commission proposed the EU Space Act. This flagship initiative is designed to tackle one of Europe’s biggest self-imposed hurdles: fragmentation. Instead of a single, unified market like the United States, Europe’s space industry has been governed by 13 different sets of national space laws. This patchwork increases cost, complexity, and risk for any company, especially startups.

The EU Space Act aims to create a single, harmonized framework for safety, resilience, and sustainability. It’s an attempt to build a unified “single market” for space activities, making it easier for companies and startups to operate, launch, and, importantly, recover vehicles across all member states. This isn’t just about streamlining paperwork. It’s a strategic, non-technical tool to solve a market problem. By creating a single market, the EU is also trying to create a unified demand signal, pooling the resources of its member states to become the large-scale, reliable institutional customer that its private industry needs to grow.

The Global Competitive Landscape: A 2025 Snapshot

Europe is not innovating in a vacuum. It is in a high-stakes race against established, funded, and increasingly proven global competitors. As of late 2025, the field is no longer just “SpaceX and everyone else.” It has become far more complex.

The American Titans: SpaceX, Blue Origin, and ULA

The United States fields three major players, each with a different approach to reusability.

SpaceX: The undisputed leader. The Falcon 9 rocket is the world’s workhorse, with a booster landing success rate over 97%. It continues to dominate the global market in launch frequency and cost. Its next-generation vehicle, Starship, is the industry’s ultimate boogeyman. This fully reusable, stainless-steel giant is deep in its flight-test campaign. Following its fifth test flight in late 2024, which saw the booster successfully caught by the launch tower “chopsticks,” Starship is rapidly progressing toward its goal of making launch costs a tiny fraction of today’s, with an aspirational price of just $10 per kilogram to orbit.

Blue Origin: The new heavyweight. For years, Jeff Bezos’s company operated in relative secrecy. That changed dramatically on November 13, 2025. On its second-ever flight, Blue Origin’s heavy-lift New Glenn rocket not only successfully launched NASA’s twin ESCAPADE spacecraft toward Mars, but it also perfectly executed a propulsive landing of its massive first-stage booster on the autonomous drone ship Jacklyn.

This event was a tectonic shift in the industry. It instantly made Blue Origin the second company in history to recover an orbital-class booster. The New Glenn, powered by seven of its own BE-4 methane engines and designed for 25 missions, is now a proven, operational, reusable competitor. This successful landing had a chilling effect on competitors. The competitive window for Europe just shrank dramatically. Until that moment, a European company could plausibly aim to be “number two” in the reusability market. As of mid-November 2025, Europe is now chasing two proven, operational, methane-and-kerosene-using American giants. The bar for entry, funding, and customer confidence just got exponentially higher.

United Launch Alliance (ULA): The legacy giant. ULA’s new Vulcan Centaur rocket, which first flew in January 2024 and completed its latest national security mission in August 2025, is a powerful and reliable launcher. It is currently expendable. ULA’s reusability plan, called “SMART Reuse,” is a more modest, hybrid approach. The plan is not to land the entire booster, but to “non-propulsively” recover only the valuable engine section after it detaches, re-enters with an inflatable heat shield, and deploys a parachute. This less complex, engine-only recovery, which is still in development, represents a different philosophy: that the engines are the only part worth the mass penalty of saving.

The Chinese Acceleration

While the US titans command headlines, a parallel and incredibly rapid development is happening in China. Driven by state support and a new, aggressive private sector, Chinese companies are on the verge of mastering reusability.

Landspace: This is the company to watch. Its Zhuque-3 (ZQ-3) rocket is a direct, stainless-steel, methane-powered analogue to the Falcon 9. Its development has been stunningly fast. After a “hop test” in early 2024, the company successfully conducted a full static-fire test of the first orbital-class rocket on October 20, 2025. As of late 2025, Landspace is in the final stages of preparing for its first orbital launch and first-stage recovery attempt, a milestone it expects to hit by early 2026.

Other companies, like Space Epoch, which performed a successful VTVL landing on a sea platform in May 2025, and i-Space, are following close behind. The key takeaway is that the “Falcon 9 clone” is on the brink of becoming a global standard, and China’s private industry is set to master it before any European company. This commoditization of the base reusable model puts enormous pressure on Europe to hurry up.

This is the gauntlet Europe faces. The market is now defined by two proven American reusable launchers, one on-the-horizon fully reusable “monster,” and a fast-moving Chinese competitor that is about to cross the finish line.

The Institutional Path: ArianeGroup, ESA, and the Methane Engine

Europe’s “official” response to the reusability challenge is a top-down, institutionally-backed program to develop the core technologies from scratch. This effort, run by the European Space Agency (ESA) and its prime industrial contractor ArianeGroup, is not about a single rocket, but about building the engine and the knowledge first.

Prometheus: The Reusable Heart

The heart of any rocket is its engine, and the heart of Europe’s reusable future is Prometheus. Developed under ESA’s Future Launchers Preparatory Programme (FLPP), Prometheus (which stands for Precursor Reusable Oxygen METHane cost Effective propUlsion System) is a clean-sheet design built for one purpose: reusability at low cost.

Its design is a strategic “leapfrog” bet. Instead of trying to make a reusable kerosene engine to compete with the Falcon 9, Europe’s institutional players skipped that generation entirely. Prometheus is a Methane-LOX engine. This choice is deliberate. Methane is denser and much easier to handle than the cryogenic liquid hydrogen that powers the Ariane 5 and 6. It also burns cleaner than kerosene, which is a major benefit for reusable engines as it avoids “coking,” or soot buildup. It also allows for a more compact rocket stage, which is easier to land, and opens the door to using “bio-methane” sourced in French Guiana.

The engine’s most critical feature is its ability to throttle. A rocket engine for launch just needs to fire at 100%. A rocket engine for landing must be able to throttle down smoothly and deeply. Prometheus is designed to vary its 100-tonne (980 kN) thrust from as low as 30% up to 110%. This is a capability Europe’s current main-stage engines lack, as they are not designed to restart in flight or throttle down for a landing burn.

The final piece of the puzzle is cost. The goal is to produce each Prometheus engine for about €1 million. This is a stunning tenfold cost reduction from the current Vulcain 2.1 engine. This will be achieved through a radical new manufacturing process that relies heavily on 3D printing (Additive Layer Manufacturing). Up to 50% of the engine can be 3D printed, drastically reducing component count, weld points, and assembly time.

As of late 2025, Prometheus is in an advanced test campaign, with its Mark-2 demonstrator undergoing hot-fire tests in Germany. It is designed to be reused at least five times and will be the workhorse for Europe’s next generation of launchers.

Themis: The Testbed for Vertical Landing

If Prometheus is the heart, Themis is the body. It is the test vehicle that will take the Prometheus engine and teach it to fly, and, more importantly, to land. Themis is Europe’s flagship VTVL (Vertical Takeoff, Vertical Landing) demonstrator, a pathfinder to gain the knowledge that SpaceX and Blue Origin learned the hard way.

Developed by ArianeGroup for ESA, Themis is not a launcher. It’s a full-scale testbed. The first article, known as Themis T1H (Themis-1 engine-Hop), is 30 meters tall and 3.5 meters in diameter, roughly the size of a small launcher. It is powered by a single Prometheus engine. Future versions of the test program may incorporate three engines to more accurately simulate the base of an orbital launcher.

Its entire purpose is to test the full suite of technologies needed for an autonomous vertical landing. This includes the vehicle’s landing legs, the aerodynamic “grid fins” that steer the rocket during its atmospheric descent, and the complex avionics and Guidance, Navigation, and Control (GNC) algorithms that have to manage the “hop, flip, and land” maneuver. This is Europe’s first time integrating all these systems at scale.

SALTO and the Esrange Hop Tests

The Themis test program is being conducted under the SALTO project (reuSable strAtegic space Launcher Technologies & Operations), which is funded by the European Union’s Horizon Europe program. After years of development, 2025 is the year the hardware finally came together.

The Themis T1H demonstrator was shipped from its assembly plant in France and arrived at the Esrange Space Center in Kiruna, Sweden, in June 2025.

This is the center of the action. As of late 2025, Themis is fully integrated. It has been erected on its launch pad and is undergoing “combined tests” – a full checkout of all the pad’s fluid, electrical, and mechanical connections to the vehicle. The next step is a “wet dress rehearsal,” a full countdown and fueling with cryogenic propellants, without lighting the engine.

Following that, the program’s first major milestone is imminent: a low-altitude “hop test.” This first flight, a simple vertical takeoff and landing, is scheduled to take place before the end of 2025. This initial test will be followed by two additional hop tests in early 2026 to expand the flight envelope.

This schedule is aggressive and has faced delays; initial hopes were for a 2022 test. Any new slip or, worse, a test failure would have ripple effects across Europe’s entire reusability roadmap. But for now, the presence of the vehicle on the pad means Europe is on the brink of its first VTVL flight.

The Future Vision: Ariane Next

Themis and Prometheus are the building blocks for Ariane Next, the conceptual name for Europe’s operational, post-Ariane 6 launcher family in the 2030s. The plan is to scale up the Themis design into a full-size first stage, likely powered by a cluster of 7 or 9 Prometheus engines, creating a vehicle in the same class as the Falcon 9.

This institutional path is a slow, deliberate, and technologically ambitious “leapfrog” strategy. It concedes the 2020s to competitors, but it’s a bet that by 2030, Europe will have mastered the methane-based technology needed to compete with Starship and New Glenn. The technology from Themis and Prometheus is intended to be a “feeder program,” supplying the core components for both this long-term state successor and, more immediately, a quasi-private spinoff.

The Commercial Vanguard: Europe’s Private Launch Contenders

While the “official” institutional program charts its long-term course, a second, parallel revolution is happening. A dynamic and fiercely competitive ecosystem of private “NewSpace” startups has emerged across the continent, all racing to become the first to successfully and commercially launch a rocket to orbit.

This is Europe’s “bottom-up” solution. These companies are not a monolith; they are a “Cambrian explosion” of different ideas, technologies, and reusability strategies. This diversity is not a flaw; it’s a rational, portfolio-based response to a technically and economically uncertain future. Instead of one bet, Europe’s private sector is making several. These startups are experimenting with different propellants – methane, kerosene, and even propane – and different recovery methods, from high-stakes propulsive VTVL to pragmatic engine-bay splashdowns and novel passive-drag systems.

This field is also defined by a “race within the race.” The German contender Isar Aerospace saw its maiden flight in March 2025 end in a dramatic failure, highlighting the immense difficulty. This event created a high-pressure scramble for the title of “first to orbit.” As of late 2025, that race is reaching a climax. Isar Aerospace is already at the launch pad for its second attempt, while its German rival, Rocket Factory Augsburg, is simultaneously preparing for its own maiden flight before the year is out. The first company to succeed will gain enormous market confidence, customer contracts, and a vital lead in the next, all-important funding rounds.

MaiaSpace: The Spinoff

Identity: Based in France, MaiaSpace is a unique hybrid. Founded in 2022, it’s a wholly-owned subsidiary of ArianeGroup. It’s an attempt to blend the fast, agile, “test & learn” culture of a startup with the technical heritage, industrial partners, and deep resources of the incumbent.

Vehicle (Maia): The 50-meter-tall Maia is essentially the commercial application of the institutional R&D. Its first stage is a direct evolution of the Themis demonstrator, and it will be powered by three Prometheus engines, with a single Prometheus on its second stage. It is, in effect, a “mini Ariane Next” fast-tracked for the commercial market.

Reusability Strategy: It will be a partially reusable VTVL rocket, using the Themis-derived first stage to perform a propulsive landing on a barge at sea, just like a Falcon 9.

Payload: In its reusable configuration, it’s targeting 500 kg to Sun-Synchronous Orbit (SSO). When flown expendably, it can lift 1,500 kg. It also features an optional “Colibri” kick stage for an additional performance boost.

Status & Timeline: MaiaSpace is well-funded by its parent ArianeGroup, which has committed over €125 million. It has already completed successful tests on its propellant tanks and kick-stage engines in 2025 and has signed its first launch customer, Exotrail.

MaiaSpace is targeting an inaugural launch in 2026 from the Guiana Space Centre (Kourou). Its fate is inextricably linked to the Themis test program. The 2026 launch date is dangerously aligned with the very first Themis hop tests in early 2026. This leaves zero margin for error. Any significant delay or failure in the Themis test campaign at Esrange will have a direct and immediate-cascading delay on the Maia commercial timeline, demonstrating the high-risk co-dependence of the two programs.

PLD Space: The Spanish Pioneer

Identity: The Spanish veteran. Founded in 2011, PLD Space made history on October 7, 2023, with the successful suborbital flight of its Miura 1 demonstrator, becoming the first private company in Europe to fly its own rocket. This flight, while suborbital, was a massive success, proving the company’s proprietary engine, guidance, and ground-systems technology.

Vehicle (Miura 5): The company is now scaling that flight-proven technology to its orbital-class Miura 5. This 35.7-meter rocket is a two-stage vehicle powered by Kerosene (a biokerosene) and LOX. It uses the company’s in-house TEPREL-C engine, a fourth-generation, 190 kN-thrust motor. The first stage will use a cluster of five TEPREL-C engines, and the second stage will use a single vacuum-optimized version.

Reusability Strategy: PLD Space is all-in on VTVL. Its first stage is designed for a propulsive landing. This is a notable evolution for the company; earlier tests had focused on a simpler parachute-and-splashdown recovery for the Miura 1, but the company is now fully committed to propulsive landing for its orbital vehicle to achieve the high launch cadence the market demands.

Payload: It’s aimed at the small-satellite market, with a capacity of ~540 kg to SSO or approximately 1,000 kg to a standard Low Earth Orbit.

Status & Timeline: The company is well-funded, with over €120 million raised as of April 2024. Its funding is a strong mix of private investors and significant institutional support from the Spanish government, which sees PLD Space as a national champion. The Miura 5 is currently in its final subsystem qualification and validation phase. The company expects to have the first fully integrated Miura 5 vehicle ready for final validation by the end of 2025 for its launch campaign.

First demonstration flights are slated for 2026. The company’s launch site at the Guiana Space Centre (Kourou) is already under construction, where it will be the first private company to operate from the historic ELM-Diamant pad. PLD Space has also announced an ambitious long-term roadmap for a “MIURA Next” family of heavy-lift launchers and a crewed capsule, “LINCE.”

Isar Aerospace: The German Contender

Identity: Based in Munich, Isar Aerospace is Europe’s most well-funded and-watched private launch startup, having raised over €550 million from a wide range of international investors.

Vehicle (Spectrum): The Spectrum is a 28-meter, two-stage rocket. It has made a different technical choice, powering its 9-engine first stage with Liquid Oxygen and Propane. Propane offers a good balance of performance (higher density-specific impulse than kerosene) and clean-burning properties, and it is easier to handle than methane. The rocket is powered by the company’s in-house Aquila engines, with nine sea-level engines on the first stage and one vacuum engine on the second.

Reusability Strategy: This is Isar’s key distinction. Its strategy is to reach orbit first. The current Spectrum vehicle is expendable. Reusability is a future goal – the company has plans for reusability testing at Esrange – but it has chosen to tackle one “miracle” at a time. The bet is that customers and investors will reward the first company to simply reach orbit and demonstrate a viable commercial service, regardless of reusability.

Payload: In its expendable configuration, it offers a very capable 1,000 kg to LEO or 700 kg to SSO.

Status & Timeline: Isar’s strategy was put to the test on March 30, 2025. On its highly anticipated maiden flight (“Going Full Spectrum”) from Andøya Spaceport, Norway – the first orbital attempt from continental Europe – the Spectrum rocket failed. It lost control seconds after liftoff and crashed, likely due to a flight control oscillation or an engine anomaly.

While a major setback, the company stated it gathered important data and immediately moved to its next vehicles, which were already in production. Proving its high-speed, well-funded approach, it has already prepared its second rocket. The hardware for “Flight Two” arrived at the Andøya launch site in November 2025, setting the stage for a second, high-stakes attempt in late 2025 or early 2026.

Rocket Factory Augsburg (RFA): The Automotive Approach

Identity: The other major German contender, RFA is taking a different approach, focusing on automotive-style mass production to drive down costs. Founded in 2018 and backed by investor KKR and the German aerospace group OHB, its philosophy is to use industrial off-the-shelf components wherever possible.

Vehicle (RFA One): This 30-meter, three-stage rocket has two unique features. First, its first stage is built from stainless steel, using “beer tank” manufacturing techniques for low cost and durability. This material, RFA claims, is cheap, easy to work with, and structurally robust for reuse. Second, its Helix engines use a staged-combustion cycle. This is a highly efficient and complex engine technology, rare for a startup, that gives its kerosene-fueled rocket a performance edge. RFA was the first EU company to successfully test a staged-combustion engine, putting its propulsion technology in the same class as the “big players.”

Reusability Strategy: RFA is not doing VTVL. Its reusability model is pragmatic: engine recovery. The plan is for the first stage to perform a soft splashdown in the ocean. The rocket is not recovered. The goal is to recover only the valuable engine bay. The logic is simple: the engines are where all the money is. The cheap stainless-steel tank is disposable, while the expensive, high-performance engine cluster is recovered, refurbished, and “recycled” for another flight.

Payload: A very competitive 1,300 kg to 500km SSO.

Status & Timeline: RFA is in a head-to-head race with Isar. As of late 2025, its maiden flight is imminent. The vehicle is being prepared for a Q4 2025 launch from SaxaVord Spaceport in the Shetland Islands, UK. The end of 2025 will be a “moment of truth” for the German NewSpace sector.

Orbex: The British Microlauncher

Identity: A UK-based company, backed by the Scottish National Investment Bank, targeting the “microlaunch” niche. This is for customers who want a dedicated ride for a tiny satellite and are willing to pay a premium for that dedicated service.

Vehicle (Prime): This is a small, 19-meter rocket with a unique fuel: Bio-Propane (BioLPG) and LOX. Orbex is heavily marketing this as the world’s most environmentally-friendly rocket, with 90-96% lower carbon emissions than comparable fossil-fuel rockets.

Reusability Strategy: Orbex has a patented, lightweight, and clever non-propulsive system called “REFLIGHT.” It is not VTVL. After stage separation, the interstage structure at the top of the first stage folds out into four “petals.” These petals act as a high-drag system, passively slowing the stage and reorienting it. A parachute then deploys, allowing for a low-velocity sea landing and recovery. It’s a system that adds minimal weight, as it requires no extra fuel, engines, or landing legs, and it avoids a complex re-entry burn.

Payload: As a microlauncher, it’s in a different class: ~180 kg to SSO.

Status & TImeline: Orbex has had a significant change in plans. After starting construction on its own“Sutherland Spaceport” in Scotland, the company announced in late 2024 it was pausing that work. It has now shifted its first launches to the more developed SaxaVord Spaceport in the Shetlands, which is also hosting RFA. Its maiden launch is now expected in 2026.

Avio: Reimagining the Upper Stage

While the rest of Europe focuses on recovering the first stage, one of the continent’s most established players is looking at a completely different, and perhaps complementary, R&D path. Avio, the Italian aerospace company and prime contractor for the Vega light-launcher, is exploring the reuse of the upper stage.

In October 2025, ESA awarded Avio a €40 million, 24-month contract to design a reusable upper stage demonstrator.

This is not a VTVL system. The concept, which has been compared to a “mini-Starship,” is for a vehicle that would launch on top of an expendable solid-rocket booster, like the P160C motor used on Vega-C and Ariane 6. This reusable upper stage would then use its own engine to complete the orbital insertion, deploy its payload, and subsequently re-enter the atmosphere. It would use aerodynamic flaps and a heat shield to survive reentry and perform a guided landing.

This project leverages Avio’s work on the new M10 Methane-LOX engine, which it is already developing for the future (expendable) Vega-E rocket. The M10’s methane fuel and reignition capability make it a suitable candidate for such an in-space, reusable system.

The timing of this contract is noteworthy. It comes after SpaceX’s Starship, a fully reusable two-stage rocket, has proven its basic principles in flight tests. This suggests that ESA is already looking past the Falcon 9 “reusable-first-stage” model that Themis and Maia are based on. This Avio contract acts as a “strategic hedge.” It’s a parallel R&D effort that, while seemingly contradictory to the Themis program, gives Europe more than one potential path to a reusable future. It explores a different, and potentially more advanced, architecture.

The Hurdles Ahead: Overcoming Europe’s Fragmentation

This flurry of activity and technological innovation is promising, but all of Europe’s players – public and private – are facing two systemic hurdles that their American and Chinese competitors do not.

The Funding Gap

Europe’s primary weakness is not a lack of engineering talent, but a lack of scale-up capital. While Isar Aerospace is a notable, well-funded exception, the overall European venture landscape is a fraction of its US counterpart. European startups are half as likely to secure the large “growth-stage” funding rounds needed to move from prototype to full-scale production.

The entire combined venture capital funding for startups in the EU and UK is 3-4 times smaller than in the United States. A key structural reason is that European pension funds – a multi-trillion-dollar pool of capital – invest a “minuscule” 0.01% into venture capital, unlike their US counterparts who are a primary source of VC funding. This “growth-stage funding gap” means that while Europe is good at inventing, it struggles to scale.

A new, promising channel may be emerging, however. In 2024, VC investment in “Deep Tech” for Defense, Security, and Resilience (DSR) hit a record €4.8 billion, driven by new entities like the NATO Innovation Fund. This may provide a critical, security-focused funding line for these dual-use space companies.

The Regulatory Labyrinth

The second, and perhaps more difficult, hurdle is geography and law. The United States is a single country with vast, empty tracts of land and two oceans. A rocket can launch from Texas, fly over the Gulf of Mexico, and have a clear path.

Europe is a crowded mosaic of 22 member states, with 13 different sets of national space laws. For a traditional, expendable rocket launching from Kourou, this isn’t a problem. For a reusable rocket, it’s a logistical nightmare.

A reusable vehicle has to launch and return. This involves re-entering the atmosphere, potentially creating sonic booms, and flying through airspace used by commercial airliners. It then needs to land, either on a pad or a barge in maritime territory.

Now imagine a German company (RFA) launching from the UK (SaxaVord) and dropping its stage in international waters near Norway. Which nation’s safety laws apply? Who is liable? Who manages the airspace closure, which could impact dozens of commercial flights? This regulatory fragmentation makes routinereusable launch, the very thing that makes it economical, nearly impossible.

This is why the EU Space Act, proposed in June 2025, is arguably as important as the Prometheus engine. Its entire purpose is to create that single, harmonized legal framework for safety, liability, and traffic management. It is the “soft infrastructure” that Europe must build to allow its new “hard infrastructure” to fly.

A reusable rocket is a machine for routine logistics. Routine logistics are impossible in a fragmented, protectionist regulatory environment. Without a unified legal framework, no European company can achieve a high launch cadence. Without high cadence, the entire economic case for reusability collapses. The legal framework is the business model.

Summary

After a decade of watching from the sidelines, Europe has fully entered the reusable rocket race. It is moving forward, driven by the dual, existential threats of economic irrelevance and a loss of strategic autonomy.

The continent’s approach is a fascinating, two-pronged strategy. On one hand, the “top-down” institutional players like ESA and ArianeGroup are making a long-term, high-risk “leapfrog” bet on advanced methane-engine technology (Prometheus) and VTVL (Themis), with first hop tests imminent in late 2025. On the other, a “bottom-up” ecosystem of dynamic private startups is taking a more chaotic, competitive, and immediate approach.

This private “NewSpace” scene is a remarkable experiment in competing ideas. We have Spanish VTVL kerosene rockets (PLD Space), German propane launchers (Isar Aerospace), German staged-combustion, stainless-steel rockets (RFA), and British bio-propane “microlaunchers” with drag-flaps (Orbex).

This entire landscape is being reshaped in real-time. 2025 has been a brutal, clarifying year. It saw the first European private orbital attempt fail (Isar, March 2025), a reminder of the staggering difficulty. It saw a new, powerful global competitor become operational (Blue Origin, November 2025), raising the bar for everyone. And it has set the stage for a “moment of truth” as RFA and Isar prepare for their next launch attempts at the end of the year.

Europe’s greatest challenges are not technical. Its engineers are building staged-combustion engines and autonomous landing systems. Its greatest challenges are systemic: a fragmented funding market that starves companies of scale-up capital, and a fragmented regulatory landscape that makes routine logistics a legal nightmare.

With the new EU Space Act, Europe is attempting to build that unified foundation. The race is on, not just for Europe to catch its global competitors, but for its own, competing internal approaches to prove which one can deliver a reliable, economical, and reusable path to the sky.