Some 70 start-ups make up the New Space French, which today represents almost 10 % of the workforce in the French space world. And there are regularly new.
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In the spatial exploration sector, start-ups are not to be outdone. Everything goes very quickly. Hélène Huby illustrates it. In July 2021, after ten years at Airbus, notably Arianegroup, she founded The Exploration Company to make a reusable spacecraft carrying freight and, in the longer term, men. Joined by around twenty engineers, this normal-SUP graduate enarch sets up his company in Germany, near Munich, and France in Bordeaux.
Learning by his former boss, André-Hubert Roussel, that there is a possibility of carrying a prototype in the first flight of Ariane 6 scheduled for the end of 2022, she files a request from the European space agency. His file is selected in December. Nine months later, the “Bikini” mission is ready. “We have chosen this name because the demonstrator is very small, sixty centimeters on eighty and weighs thirty-five kilos,” laughs the leader of this start-up. It will be a question of testing the resistance of its thermal shield during the start of the atmosphere in the atmosphere.
Microgravity experiences
The development rate is supported. Every two years, a new launch and a new development are planned. In 2024, this vessel called “NYX” in reference to the Greek goddess of the creation of the cosmos, will be larger (1.6 tonnes) and will be able to take 300 kilos of cargo. It will evolve in low orbit for several hours around the earth. “We already have 200 kilos of books,” she says. Customers, industrialists or researchers, want to validate technologies or have microgravity experiences. Two years later, in October 2026, it will have its normal size, four meters wide, will take four tonnes of cargo, and will remain in orbit six months, with the possibility of supplying space stations. And, in 2028, Nyx will be motorized and will then be able to go to the moon.
“The interest of a small structure like The Exploration Company is to make decisions very quickly, everyone is responsible, rather than spending days to study, we are constantly testing”, appreciates Hélène Huby. Under these conditions “the failure is not blocking, it makes us move forward,” she said, making his philosophy of SpaceX. So, as you go, “a bit as for the iPhone, we add new functions to our ship”.
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