“We must not drag on, it is now that it is played. » François Chopard, founder of Starburst, an incubator for aeronautical and space start-ups, is one of the seven ambassadors of the section of the France 2030 investment plan devoted to space. As such, it participates in the allocation of 1.55 billion euros of public funding over five years, decided in December 2021 by the government, to emerging companies in the new space. Objective: to try to stay in the race led by the Americans and the Chinese.
“For the United States, it is a subject of supremacy, or superiority vis-à-vis China; for the Europeans, it is more a concern for independence from the Americans”, specifies this aerospace engineer. Several calls for projects will follow over the years on different themes, in order to strengthen the French space industry, accelerate its technological change and contribute to the country’s sovereignty. “We try to guide, advise in the choice of projects, so that the amounts are as large as possible, that no one is forgotten and, above all, that it is strategic”, explains Mr. Chopard.
The priority being independent access to space, the first call for projects concerned microlaunchers – these small rockets capable of placing loads of less than 500 kilos in low orbit – an area where France is lagging behind, compared to the British and the Germans, not to mention the Americans. And this, while demand is intensifying, driven by the miniaturization of satellites, the size of which can be reduced to that of a shoebox weighing less than 50 kilos.
Leverage
Their increasing power and falling costs, they have become essential for telecommunications, defence, finance, agriculture or transport. According to Euroconsult, the sector’s growth prospects have never been so high: 12,600 satellites should be launched in the 2020s, including 8,600 small satellites in low orbit, 500 kilometers from the Earth. In this first edition of the space component, twelve of the fifteen projects selected at the beginning of October therefore concern microlaunchers, from their manufacture to services, including components and electronics.
These are Opus Aerospace, Sirius Space Services, SpaceDreamS, Nobrak, Hybrid Propulsion for Space, CMP Composites, The Exploration Company, Watt & Well, Halcyon, Latitude, Leanspace and Exotrail. The objective is to have a reusable microlauncher in 2026. The 65 million euros allocated to these first fifteen winners are obviously insufficient for everyone to carry out their projects. But they legitimize them.
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