The exploration behind The Exploration Company’s €40.5 Million Series A, co-led by EQT Ventures and Red River West
Over the last few years, Jenny, I and the rest of the EQT Ventures team have met lots of European space tech companies.
While there were a few ambitious ones (Endurosat is worth mentioning), many are either copy/pasted from sci-fi novels (let’s go into wormholes and extract minerals from asteroids using AI) or too hobby oriented.
But that was before we met Hélène Huby. Hélène has one the most impressive resumés of any space tech founder we’ve met in Europe. She spent 10 years at Airbus Defense and Space, where she was the VP of Space strategy and later the VP of ESM — the European Service Module –which is the powerhouse of NASA’s Orion vehicle, with the goal to put a human on the Moon for the first time since 1972.
She left Airbus together with Artur Koop, the ESM propulsion subsystem lead, and Jon Reijneveld, the deputy lead systems engineer and joined forces with Sebastien Reichstat (Reaction Engines and AriadneGroup) as well as Pierre Vinet (AriadneGroup and AVIO) to launch the Exploration Company.
The goal is to build a sustainable, reusable space capsule called Nyx, that can eventually be re-fuelled in orbit. It has similarities with SpaceX’s Dragon capsule or Boeing’s Starliner, but has no European competitor. Nyx can be used by private and public operators to fly cargo into space, resupply space stations, and in time, transport humans. With the International Space Station being decomissioned and a lot of private space stations on the horizon the market for Low Earth Orbit Space Exploration is projected to be $52bn in 2035.
Nyx will be the first multi-mission, sustainable space exploration platform, and is compatible with all major launchers from Europe and beyond.
Beyond doing research in space or resupplying space stations, the Exploration company is dreaming about developing a crew version of Nyx in the future, enabling a whole new era of space travel and exploration.
We at EQT Ventures are super happy companies like The Exploration Company are born in Europe. What Hélène, Artur, Jon, Sebastien, Pierre and the rest of the team at The Exploration Company is building, is exactly what Europe needs.
Huge thanks to Red River West for letting us invest alongside them, Cherry Ventures who introduced us, and Jenny and Sai at EQT Ventures who worked alongside myself on the deal.
Also, don’t miss this excellent write-up by Aria Alamalhodaei for Techcrunch. This was before the funding round and explains what The Exploration Company wants to do beautifully.
Space. The final frontier.
