Germany's new space industry: rockets from Ottobrunn and Augsburg, capsules from Munich
Isar Aerospace has reached orbit from Europe. Rocket Factory Augsburg is working towards its first launch in Shetland. The Exploration Company is building a cargo capsule. A sober status report.
For decades, European access to space meant government-led programmes and a small number of large primes. Since the late 2010s a cluster of privately funded companies around Munich and Augsburg has set out to change that. In 2026 the sector passed its first real milestone, and it also learned again how unforgiving rocketry is.
Isar Aerospace: orbit on the second attempt
Isar Aerospace was founded in March 2018 by Daniel Metzler, Markus Brandl and Josef Peter Fleischmann and is headquartered in Ottobrunn, near Munich. Its Spectrum rocket is a two-stage, liquid-fuelled vehicle about 28 metres tall, designed to carry up to 1,000 kilograms to low Earth orbit. The company aims to build most of the rocket in-house.
The first flight, from Andøya Spaceport in Norway on 30 March 2025, ended about 30 seconds after lift-off when the vehicle lost attitude control; the investigation traced the cause to a vent valve that opened unexpectedly. The second flight, called "Onward and Upward", lifted off from Andøya on 5 September 2026 after several delays. It reached orbit and deployed its payloads, which included five CubeSats and an experiment selected through a German Space Agency competition. It was the first orbital launch by a commercial company from Europe and the first successful orbital flight from Western Europe. Isar was also the first of the five companies in ESA's European Launcher Challenge to reach orbit. The company has said further vehicles are in production and that a second launch site is under construction in Nova Scotia, Canada.
Rocket Factory Augsburg: a harder road
Rocket Factory Augsburg (RFA) was founded in August 2018 as a spin-off of the space group OHB, which remains an investor. Its RFA One rocket is designed to place up to 1,300 kilograms into polar orbit and is powered by Helix engines that burn kerosene and liquid oxygen. Unusually for a small launcher, Helix uses an oxygen-rich staged combustion cycle, a more efficient but more demanding design, adopted in 2020.
RFA will launch from SaxaVord Spaceport on Unst in the Shetland Islands, where it secured exclusive access to a pad in 2023. Its path has been setback-heavy. In August 2024 a first stage was destroyed in a fire and explosion during a static-fire test, damaging the launch mount. In July 2025 ESA preselected RFA as one of five candidates for the European Launcher Challenge. In July 2026, after a week of pad testing, RFA said it had found an issue with the vehicle that required further investigation and de-stacked the rocket. A first launch from Scottish soil remains the company's central objective.
The Exploration Company: coming back down
Launch is only half of space logistics. The Exploration Company, founded in 2021 by Hélène Huby and based in the Munich area with operations in France, is developing Nyx, a reusable capsule designed to fly on different rockets, deliver cargo to government and commercial space stations and return to Earth. Its first full-scale orbital demonstration mission is planned to dock with the International Space Station and return. The company has completed a series of ground tests on Nyx hardware, including drop and splashdown tests.
In September 2026 the company announced a Series C round of 387 million euros, which it described as the largest Series C for a European space company to date; the round was subject to regulatory approvals. The company also reports contracts and commitments with ESA and commercial station operators. Crewed flight is a stated long-term goal.
The business case
Small launchers target a specific market: satellites and constellations that want a dedicated ride to a chosen orbit at a chosen time, rather than sharing a large rocket with dozens of other payloads. Institutional customers also value launch capacity that sits within Europe, for reasons of autonomy. The competition is intense, however. Rideshare offers from large American providers are cheap, and several European rivals are pursuing the same customers. Reliability and cadence, not just a first success, will decide who wins contracts.
Why Bavaria?
The concentration of these companies in southern Germany is not accidental. The region hosts established space and aerospace firms, the Technical University of Munich and the Bundeswehr University, and a supplier base used to aerospace-grade work. Engineers can move between start-ups, primes and research institutes without leaving the region.
What to watch
- Cadence: for Isar, the question now is how quickly it can move from one success to regular commercial flights.
- A first flight for RFA: a successful launch from SaxaVord would also be a milestone for UK vertical launch.
- Nyx's demonstration: docking with the ISS would give Europe its own commercial cargo return capability.
- ESA procurement: the European Launcher Challenge will shape which companies secure institutional business.
Germany's new space firms have moved from slide decks to hardware. The next two years will show whether they can turn engineering progress into reliable services.