If space is hard, winning the European Launcher Challenge (ELC) might be harder.
ESA selected just five winners for the first stage of the ELC this week from a pool of a dozen applicants. Some of the companies not moving to the next round include UK-based Skyrora, and France-based Latitude.
Payload caught up with officials from both companies to see what the loss meant for the future of their respective launch systems, and both were in agreement: ELC meant, literally, nothing to them.
The pressure is off: For Skyrora, being left out of the ELC—and its potential €169M prize—is expected to have little effect on the trajectory of the company or its ability to meet its launch schedule.
“From our commercial plan, this was a nice to have…We’re still in the exact same position as we were,” Derek Harris, Skyrora’s business development lead, told Payload.
How soon the startup can test its Skylark L vehicle is dependent on securing a UK launch license. It now expects that license to come through soon, opening the door for an early 2026 launch from SaxaVord spaceport.
Skyrora is also working to qualify the engines for its larger vehicle—Skyrora XL—which it aims to demonstrate as early as next year.
Skyrora has received interest from customers to pay for a ride on these initial excursions, which should bring down the total cost of the test launch campaign, Harris said.
In the meantime, Skyrora has other streams of revenue.
- It has received grants and commercial interest for many of the components it has developed in-house.
- It was also selected last year as one of many companies supporting the UK’s advanced hypersonic missile program with 3D printing capabilities.
By not winning the ELC, Harris argued Skyrora gained the freedom to develop its rocket on its own timeline. The ELC requires that all winning launchers demonstrate an orbital flight by 2027, and an upgraded capacity flight by 2028—requirements that may be unattainable for some.
“It’s kind of a poison chalice,” Harris said. “If you win it, you’ve got the money, but then comes all of these little boxes you need to check to actually get any money down the line…It could actually be a bloodshed moment in the industry.”
The pressure is back on? For Latitude, the sentiment that ELC was a “nice to have” is a familiar one.
“We did not need it, financially speaking,” Stanislas Maximin, Latitude’s founder and executive chairman, told Payload. “It is what it is, so we’ll just fund it ourselves. We were planning to do what we presented anyway.”
Like Skyrora, Latitude is pushing ahead on its business plan as if nothing happened. It’s working to finalize its technology, build up its industrial capacity, and secure as many commercial contracts as possible.
- Latitude expects to qualify the engine for its Zephyr vehicle by the end of the summer, then assemble its second stage for a full test by the end of the year. The company has 80% of the second stage in its factory, and aims to launch in 2026, according to Maximin.
- In April, Latitude announced a new factory in Reims, which offers over 25,000 m2 of space and the capacity to produce as many as 50 rockets per year.
- Latitude’s commercial interest is stronger than ever. The company has signed 26 flight reservations for the next four years, and has €400M of potential revenue in the pipeline, according to Maximin.
Unlike Skyrora, however, Latitude doesn’t see the ELC loss as easing the pressure to succeed quickly.
“The pressure doesn’t come from ESA. The pressure comes from my investors, from my own f****** expectations—which are higher than my investors’—and from our customers, and from our own willingness to perform as an organization. We do not need ESA to push us,” Maximin said.
In fact, what Latitude would like from ESA is for the agency to get out of the way. Part of the ELC includes a provision to direct future ESA contracts to winners of the challenge, boxing out Skyrora and Latitude from at least some of the agency’s contracts going forward.
“I think every contract should be open to anyone… I do believe free trade should be enforced and for me, the monopolies that ESA and the countries have created in the last four years are bad for an economy, [and] bad for competitiveness,” Maximin said.
No guarantees: The prevailing opinion for both launchers is that—despite purporting otherwise—winning the ELC had little to do with technical success or commercial competitiveness. Lucky for them, Europe’s push to stand up sovereign launch capabilities doesn’t ensure that every challenge winner succeeds in the long run—nor that every challenge loser fails as a result.
“ELC will definitely help create a warmer environment for investors to say you’re confident that this company is one of the top five,” said Matthew Archer, director of launch for the UK Space Agency. “[But] if you ask me, in five years’ time, where did some of them go…Some of them will be successful. Some of them won’t.”
