Are German rockets ready for orbit?

On March 30, 2025, "Spectrum" lifts off from the Norwegian Andøya Spaceport. The rocket from Isar Aerospace is intended to show that a German start-up can develop, build and launch an orbital-capable launch vehicle. After around 30 seconds, the flight is over. Spectrum falls in a controlled manner into the sea. For space companies, even a test flight that ends early is valuable if the data accelerate the next attempt.

Isar speaks of an unintended opening of a vent valve and loss of attitude control at the beginning of a rotation around the longitudinal axis. The flight termination system is said to have functioned as intended. "We have already implemented the necessary corrective measures; now we want to soon return to the launch pad. We launch, learn and keep going," said Alexandre Dalloneau, Vice President Mission and Launch Operations at Isar Aerospace. The second Spectrum flight is to carry five CubeSats and another test payload.  CubeSats are small, standardized satellites; their basic unit measures 10 by 10 by 10 centimeters, larger variants consist of several such units. It was postponed or aborted several times in 2026 - among other things because of a problem with a pressure valve, an unauthorized watercraft in the sea area closed off for the launch, as well as because of conspicuous measured values in the fluid and pressure systems. 

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From plan to practice

Isar also reports on customer missions through 2028 and on the expansion of launch infrastructure, among other things at Spaceport Nova Scotia in Canada. That underscores the expansion ambition, but remains a target vision. Only repeated operations show whether customer missions can be served in a plannable way.

“Customers will only demand launch services if reliability and safety are ensured. If that is fulfilled, the commercial considerations also come into play - in particular the launch costs per kg and the availability of launch capacities,” said Manfred Hader, Senior Partner at Roland Berger and head of the global Aerospace & Defense team there. As early as 2022, Roland Berger had already described in the study “Lift-off - How Europe can develop and secure a small-satellite launcher solution” how Europe can build up and secure its own launch capacities for small satellites. As the Isar case among others shows: microlaunchers have factories, test stands, launch sites, engines, capital, and customer announcements. What is missing is reliable launch practice. 

Europe's lag

The question is economic, technological, and geopolitical at the same time. Satellites provide communication, Earth observation, navigation, and military reconnaissance. Whoever cannot put them into orbit remains dependent. According to a study by the European Centre for International Political Economy (ECIPE) there were 181 orbital launches in the USA in 2025, 92 in China, but only 8 in the EU; in 2023 and 2024 there were only 3 there in each case. For satellite deployments, the gap is larger: in 2025, 135 satellites were attributable to EU actors, 371 to China, and more than 3,700 to US actors. “Europe is at a critical point in the development of the global space economy,” it says. 

On the launch pad:

Isar Aerospace

Isar Aerospace is the most visible and best-funded German candidate. The company, founded in 2018, is based in the Munich area and is developing Spectrum, a two-stage launch vehicle for small and medium-sized satellites. It uses liquid oxygen and propane and, according to the company, is intended to carry up to 1,000 kilograms into low Earth orbits. According to its own statements, Isar employs more than 400 people; in June 2026, the company raised 270 million euors. In Parsdorf, it is currently moving into a new production facility that, in the long term, is intended to enable the construction of up to 40 Spectrum rockets per year. “Space has long since ceased to be uncharted territory - it is the foundation of state capacity to act,” said Isar co-founder and CEO Daniel Metzler in the statement on the Series D financing. 

Rocket Factory Augsburg (RFA)

RFA is pursuing a different industrial approach. The company emerged in 2018 as a corporate spin-off of OHB subsidiary MT Aerospace, an Augsburg-based aerospace supplier. The core product is RFA ONE, a three-stage launch vehicle with staged combustion for small and medium-sized satellites. RFA ONE Block 1 is initially intended to carry 500 kilograms, RFA ONE Block 2 up to 1,500 kilograms into orbit. The additional upper stage Redshift is intended to be able to deploy payloads precisely. RFA relies on industrial components and standardization. “We build rockets like cars,” is the company slogan on the RFA website.

RFA, too, had to cope with a setback. In August 2024, the first prototype failed during a qualification test at the Scottish SaxaVord Spaceport. No one was injured.

In January 2025, RFA reported the British launch license for RFA ONE; in March 2026, the company delivered the first and second rocket stages to SaxaVord. “After the 2024 incident, we thoroughly reviewed, analyzed, and tested everything. We then improved the systems to achieve even higher reliability,” said Dr. Stefan Brieschenk, Chief Development Officer at RFA. According to current planning, the first orbital flight is still to take place in 2026. 

Hyimpulse

The company from Neuenstadt am Kocher (Baden-Württemberg, 100 employees) is relying on a third technical path. While Isar and RFA work with liquid engines, HyImpulse uses a hybrid propulsion system made of paraffin and liquid oxygen. The smaller SR75 demonstrated this approach suborbitally: On May 3, 2024, it launched from the Koonibba Test Range in South Australia - it was the “transition from many years of research and development to proven flight capability - from a startup with a vision to a company that delivers operational performance,” according to Dr. Christian Schmierer, co-founder and co-CEO of HyImpulse. The launch of the SL1 rocket is targeted for 2027; it is intended to carry payloads of up to 600 kilograms into low Earth orbit. HyImpulse also points to 45 million euro in financing, launches from SaxaVord in Scotland targeted for later this year, and a letter of intent for possible launch activities in Oman. 

Government assistance, open market

Three providers, three profiles - but one open question: economic resilience. Isar points to capital and customer missions; RFA to costs, standardization and industrial manufacturing logic; HyImpulse to financing and flexible launch services. In addition, there are launch sites and institutional demand. But there are still no robust market prices and recurring revenues. The decisive factor is who turns launches into a plannable, affordable and repeatable service.

Without state support, the three providers would hardly have gotten this far. In the preliminary phase, HyImpulse, Isar and RFA each received 500,000 euros. The competition was organized by the German Space Agency at DLR; the funds came from the ESA program “Boost!”.[ii] In the main rounds, Isar and RFA each won 11 million euros for the further qualification of their launch systems. In return, they were to carry DLR payloads on early demonstration flights. At the end of 2024, according to European Spaceflight, another 95 million euros from the federal government for Isar, RFA and HyImpulse were added.[iii] The money was intended to support the final development phase and position them for the European Launcher Challenge. ESA requires selected providers to carry out a successful orbital launch by 2027 at the latest. 

Price, cadence, and the SpaceX question

State and market have never been cleanly separated in spaceflight. SpaceX did not become big without NASA and Pentagon contracts. The question is: Does public demand create a competitive market - or does it finance parallel providers of which in the end only one survives? Erik Kulus's NewSpace Index counts 216 small-launcher projects worldwide. Of these, 17 are considered operational, 67 are in active development; around half are no longer actively developing hardware.

Earth observation, communication, defense, and research are generating growing data demand. But not every payload needs its own small-rocket launch; many can fly along more cheaply on larger launch vehicles. The benchmark for price and cadence is set by SpaceX - with an entry price of $350,000 for 50 kilograms. That corresponds to $7,000 per kilogram; additional mass is also charged at $7,000 per kilogram. Converted, this currently amounts to around 6,100 euros per kilogram. RFA announced a launch price of 3 million euros in 2021. At 1,300 kilograms of payload, that would be around 2,300 euros per kilogram. That is certainly not a reliable regular-operations price. With new figures, the providers are all the more cautious; they do not publish any. “In the market, significant shifts in terms of supply and demand have been seen since 2021. As of today, a regular base price cannot yet be firmly communicated,” Augsburg says. 

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Price per kilogram or control?

The central question is what customers ultimately pay more for: faster availability, more precise target orbits, or greater independence. For military, security-critical, or time-critical payloads, that can be decisive. Governmental and military customers pay for availability, sovereignty, and redundancy. Price-sensitive commercial customers possibly do not.

“If time is not the decisive criterion, the launches of several satellites can also be bundled in larger launch vehicles, which is generally more cost-effective. In the current situation with limited launch supply in Europe, new microlaunchers could expand the offering and thus sovereign capacities,” said Manfred Hader of Roland Berger. In addition, capabilities could be built up in the companies that could also be further developed toward the development and production of large launch vehicles, which would further the sovereign offering and launch capacities in Germany and/or Europe.

Meanwhile, demand is being justified more strongly in terms of security policy. Isar says that demand within twelve months shifted from almost exclusively civil to 60 percent defense demand. 

Military as anchor customers

The Brussels think tank European Centre for International Political Economy (ECIPE) shows how high the hurdle is in international competition. It sees Europe's lag as an expression of structural problems: capital market gap, fragmented public investment and Old Space industrial policy. The EU does have a number of leading space start-ups comparable to that of the USA. However, they are funded significantly less: 42 percent of the leading EU space start-ups had raised less than 10 million US dollars, in the USA the figure was 8 percent. On average, funding per space start-up in the EU is just over 48 million US dollars, in the USA almost 317 million.

“Europe's space economy needs a fundamental rethink: in the interplay of public policy, private capital and industrial organization,” it continues. Manfred Hader becomes more specific: “Germany and Europe respectively must act with their institutional and military demand as anchor customers and enable the companies, with long-term plannable contracts, to amortize their development and fixed costs. Only then will the companies also be in a position to hold their own in the commercial market with competitive offers.” 

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Dual-use potential

For Germany as a technology location, it is not only a matter of which rocket reaches orbit first. Microlaunchers combine capabilities with high dual-use potential: engine development, turbomachinery, cryogenics, tanks, materials, avionics, software, sensor technology, additive manufacturing, test stand technology, quality assurance and system integration. What is developed for civilian satellite launches can also gain significance for security- and defense-relevant applications.