The Exploration Company is developing Nyx, a reusable spacecraft designed to carry up to 3,000 kilograms of cargo to and from Earth, with a target maiden flight to the ISS in 2028. The startup was founded three years ago by Hélène Huby, Sebastien Reichstat, and Pierre Vine and operates out of Germany, France, and Italy. The new funding will support continued development and testing after the company flew a demonstrator on Ariane 6 (not deployed) and plans a second sub-scale mission, Mission Possible, on a Falcon 9 next year. The company has won an ESA LEO Cargo Return Service study contract worth around €25 million ($27 million) running through 2026. Financially, the Series B brings the company’s total funding to over $208 million and follows a reported $770 million contract backlog, about 90% of which comes from private station developers Vast, Axiom Space, and Starlab. The Exploration Company is a space tech startup based in Bordeaux, France and Munich, Germany, founded in 2019 by Hélène Huby. It is developing Nyx, a modular, reusable and in-orbit refuelable vehicle designed to carry cargo and, in the longer run, humans, with open-interface software and hardware. The company raised €40m in a Series A to advance its vehicle program. The round was co-led by EQT Ventures and Red River West with participation from Promus Ventures, Cherry Ventures, Vsquared, Omnes Capital, July Fund, Partech, Possible Ventures, Habert Dassault Finance, Schlumberger and Sista Fund. The Exploration Company intends to use the funds to commercialize Nyx Mission Odyssey, finalize and launch a second vehicle, and expand the team. No operating metrics (revenue or user numbers) were disclosed in the article. The Exploration Company is developing Nyx, a reusable, refuel-able orbital vehicle composed of a service module and a reusable capsule. Nyx is designed to carry up to 4,000 kilograms to low Earth orbit for missions up to six months; the service module could be reusable and refueled using in-space resource utilization. The startup plans to fly the Bikini reentry demonstrator aboard an Ariane 6 rocket this October, follow with a full-scale prototype in 2024 on SpaceX, and target Nyx’s maiden flight in 2026. Founders Hélène Huby, Artur Koop and Jon Reijneveld (with Sébastien Reichstat and Pierre Vinet) left Airbus to form the company, and management largely comes from large aerospace corporations. The Exploration Company has raised around €11.5 million to date, including a €5.3 million seed led by Promus Ventures with participation from Vsquared and Cherry Ventures, and its headcount has grown to around 30 people. The company was selected for AWS’s 2022 Space Accelerator, has referred to Orbital Reef as a partner, plans to open a U.S. subsidiary next year, and intends to develop a human-rated version of Nyx longer term.

Total raised

$209M

Funding rounds

3

Latest round

Series B

Latest activity

Nov 2024