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PARIS — European startup The Exploration Company, which is developing a cargo vehicle with a key test flight launching within days, says it has long-term plans to be able to fly people as well.
The company unveiled an updated model of its Nyx spacecraft at the Paris Air Show June 16. It is working on Nyx with plans for a test flight to the International Space Station in 2028 through a European Space Agency program intended to develop cargo spacecraft.
The Exploration Company says that while Nyx will initially be used for cargo missions, it has plans to create a version for crewed flights. The model the company displayed showed two astronauts on board along with cargo.
“We have already done the first studies,” Victor Maier, lead for Germany and central Europe business at the company, said at the unveiling event. A fully crewed version of Nyx, he said, could accommodate four or five astronauts, with an interior design that includes windows and touchscreen displays like SpaceX’s Crew Dragon.,
The company is looking into a crewed version now, he said, because it already needs to support flights to the ISS and future commercial stations where astronauts will enter and work in the vehicle while docked. “So, we’re already ticking some of the boxes for certifying for human spaceflight once we’re docked to the station.”
A crewed version of Nyx would take about 10 years to develop, Maier estimated, and cost on the order of one billion euros ($1.15 billion). He said, though, that now was the time to discuss at work as ESA makes plans for its ministerial conference in late November in Germany.
“We need Europe to decide if we want to have this in Europe,” he said of a crewed spacecraft. “This is the moment this year, at the ministerial conference happening in Bremen, where the member states can take this decision.”
He said a crewed version would require European government support, presumably from ESA, because the high cost is beyond the scope of private financing or even national-level support. “We need Europe, because no country alone would be able to do it.”
Mission Possible
In the meantime, The Exploration Company is focused on the cargo version of Nyx. Maier said in an interview after the unveiling event that the company has six missions on its manifest, including the demonstration mission for ESA, three missions for Starlab Space, and individual missions for Axiom Space and Vast.
The company launched its first test spacecraft, dubbed Mission Bikini, last July on the inaugural Ariane 6 launch. However, the failure of the upper stage of the rocket to perform a final deorbit burn meant that the spacecraft could not separate and perform its planned reentry test.
The next test flight is called Mission Possible. This is a larger spacecraft with a mass of 1.6 tons and diameter of 2.5 meters. It will be a full test, he said, of all the technologies needed for Nyx, from reentry through splashdown, rather than just testing reentry systems as was the case for the much smaller Mission Bikini.
Mission Possible is also carrying cargo for customers. He said it has about 300 kilograms of cargo on board, ranging from cosmetic and pharmaceutical experiments to alcohol. “So, different use cases for the future commercialization of space.”
Mission Possible will launch on SpaceX’s Transporter-14 mission. Maier said the launch was imminent but that he could not disclose a specific date. According to unofficial launch manifests, the Falcon 9 launch of Transporter-14 from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California is scheduled for as soon as June 21.
The spacecraft will spend only about three hours in orbit before deorbiting, splashing down in the Pacific Ocean. Maier said a recovery ship for the spacecraft had already departed an Alaska port heading to the splashdown location.
There are no plans by The Exploration Company to fly another test mission after Mission Possible before the ISS demonstration mission. There may be opportunities to do additional ground tests of some systems, he said, if needed after Mission Possible.
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