Arianespace and Orbex have signed an MoU to study possible, future cooperation to answer customers’ requirements.
The agreement aims to increase the joint capabilities and flexibility of both partners’ services. In particular, it is expected that future collaboration would be particularly beneficial for customers planning smallsat constellations, providing a flexible solution for LEO payloads.
Light and heavy-lift launch vehicles could jointly support customers in deploying their initial constellations into the required orbital planes, provide precise injections of a smaller number of satellites through dedicated missions, as well as provide replenishment and replacement launches.
Prime is a 19 meter long, two-stage rocket that is designed to transport smallsats weighing up to 180 kg into LEO. Orbex Prime is powered by a renewable fuel, bio-propane, that allows the rocket to reduce carbon emissions significantly compared to other similarly sized rockets being developed elsewhere around the world. A study by the University of Exeter showed that a single launch of the Orbex Prime rocket will produce up to 96 percent lower carbon emissions than comparable space launch systems using fossil fuels.
Orbex has received widespread interest from satellite manufacturers and has already signed commercial launch contracts with seven customers. At the end of 2022, Orbex concluded its Series C funding round, netting the company an additional £40.4 million. Despite a challenging landscape for raising capital, Orbex attracted new investors and brought along many of its existing investors into the new round of funding.
In May 2023, Orbex began construction of Sutherland Spaceport (formerly Space Hub Sutherland) on the North coast of Scotland. It is the first vertical launch spaceport to be built on the UK mainland and will become Orbex’s ‘home’ spaceport, where the company will launch as many as 12 rockets per year for the deployment of satellites into Earth’s orbit.
“This collaboration holds a lot of promise for the European launch market and we’re excited to see where we can take this. We are clearly very pleased that Arianespace has chosen to work with Orbex. We already have a strong position in the emerging European microlauncher market and this cooperation could take us even further commercially.”
— Martin Coates, CEO, Orbex
Orbex is a UK-based spaceflight company with headquarters, production and testing facilities in Scotland, and design and testing facilities in Denmark. Orbex staff members have professional backgrounds with NASA, ESA and several commercial spaceflight organisations. The company is funded by the Scottish National Investment bank, two of the UK’s largest venture capital funds, BGF and Octopus Ventures, two of Europe’s largest venture capital funds, Heartcore Capital and the High-Tech Gründerfonds, as well as strategic investors Elecnor, parent company of Deimos Space, and Jacobs, the largest services supplier to NASA. The company has won more than a dozen R&D contracts from a wide variety of bodies, including the UK Space Agency (UKSA), the European Space Agency (ESA) and the European Commission Horizon 2020 program.
