PLD Space

ESA has signed contracts under the European Launcher Challenge, an ESA funding program that supports smaller private rocker companies so that Europe has more launch options, with several private launch providers.

Rocket Factory Augsburg received one hundred eighty-six point nine million euros, while PLD Space secured one hundred fifty-eight point nine million euros.

Isar Aerospace received one hundred ninety-seven point eight million euros for development and launch-related work.

ESA's Director of Space Transportation, Geraldine Naya, called the awards the start of a broader push, saying the program "kicks off the European Launcher Challenge, encouraging competition among European launch providers." Meanwhile, Isar Aerospace's Chief Commercial Officer, Stella Guillén, framed the contract in strategic terms, stating that Europe is putting serious resources behind its space sovereignty.

PLD Space's Executive President, Ezekiel Sanchez, described the award as validation of the company's longer-term plan, saying it "confirms the maturity of the roadmap we have been building for years." Participating companies must achieve an orbital launch before twenty twenty-eight under the program's requirements, and successful launches could broaden Europe's available launch services beyond Ariane Six and Vega circa rocker factories.

RFA One currently targets payloads of up to five hundred kilograms to a five hundred-kilometer sun-synchronous orbit, an orbit that passes over the same point on Earth at the same local time each day, commonly used for Earth observation and weather satellites.

PLD Space's Miura Five targets about five hundred forty kilograms to a sun-synchronous orbit.

Isar Aerospace says Spectrum targets payloads of up to one thousand kilograms to low Earth orbit.

It's time for AMSAT's North America's satellite shorts from all over.

On Thursday, October 1st, 2026, Spanish launch service provider PLD Space signed a bilateral agreement with the French space agency to advance commercial launch infrastructure at the Guiana Space Center in Kokoro, French Guiana.

The partnership establishes a joint technical framework to assess the feasibility of adding a second launch pad at the ELM-DIAMAT complex to support flight operations for PLD Spaces Miura 5 and Miura 9 orbital launch vehicles.

The joint initiative aligns with European Space Agency's efforts under the European Launcher Challenge to diversify access to orbit by integrating commercial launch providers into Europe's primary spaceport.

By expanding launch capacity at ELM Diamant, CNES, and PLD Space, the aim is to increase mission throughput, lower spaceport operational bottlenecks, and establish a multi-user gateway capable of handling both European government payloads and commercial Constellation deployments.

A 3U CubeSat carrying a camera system, an in-house avionics board with encryption and AI image processing experiments, and a beacon transmitting the Bahraini national anthem and a quote from the King of Bahrain for amateurs to collect.

The satellite was launched on SpaceX's Transporter 14 mission in March 2025.

I'm Matt.

Today, I'm gonna take you to that factory floor where PLD Space is building a massive rocket to take Europe's satellites into space.

It's an amazing scene.

Let's go.

It's a question of sovereignty, which brings us back to Elche.

It's a small town in southern Spain next door to Alicante, where you may have been on your summer holiday.

PLD Space was founded in Elche in 2011 by two engineers named Raul, Raul Verdú and Raul Torres.

Torres had been building amateur rockets since he was a teenager.

talking

to PLD Space where they're building rockets, so launchers, which is something that we don't really have very much of in Europe.

How important is it? that Europe has every stage of the process, building things, sending them up into space, interpreting the data on the ground, all in Europe.

I think that the issue of strategic autonomy, you're rightly saying it, it touches the whole chain now.

And now, of course, SpaceX is the biggest stock market flotation in history.

So what's Europe's answer? Raúl Verdú founded PLD Space in Elche, Spain, 15 years ago.

Elche is a city better known for shoes than rockets.

It's one of the centers of Spain's traditional footwear industry.

PLD Space now builds rockets there in a converted shoe factory with hundreds of engineers and a production floor that looks like nothing else in Spain.

When I visited, I asked Verdoux what made him believe he could do this, build a competitive European rocket company, when SpaceX was already a giant and the Chinese government was pouring billions into its own program.

You know, we remember to ourselves that, for example, we have more funding today, like the SpaceX in the very, very early days.

Gravity is the same in El Che as it is in California.