Eutelsat CEO Jean-François Fallacher and MaiaSpace CEO Yohann Leroy. Credit: MaiaSpace
LA PLATA, Maryland — Satellite fleet operator Eutelsat, in contracting multiple launches with startup MaiaSpace starting in 2027, accomplished two objectives.
The company secured a launcher with the flexibility to launch small or large numbers of OneWeb satellites into the constellation’s 1,200-km orbit at a debut launcher’s price, and avoided blowback from the French government that would have occurred if it had again selected SpaceX’s Falcon 9 for a OneWeb launch.
The MaiaSpace contract, announced Jan. 15, is for an undetermined number of flights. Eutelsat has ordered 440 OneWeb Gen 1 replacement satellites from Airbus Defence and Space, with the first batches to be ready in late 2026.
The Maia launcher, which is one of five vehicles selected for financial backing in the European Space Agency’s European Launcher Challenge, has targeted its first orbital flight in 2027. France committed 179 million euros ($208 million) to Maia on Nov. 27 at the European Space Agency (ESA) ministerial conference.
MaiaSpace Chief Executive Yohann Leroy — a former Eutelsat Deputy Chief Executive and Chief Technical Officer — said in a Jan. 15 statement that the Eutelsat contract demonstrates MaiaSpace’s competitiveness on the commercial market and gives it a “strategic position for sovereign access to space in Europe.”
MaiaSpace is not your typical launcher startup. It is 100% owned by ArianeGroup, the prime contractor of the Ariane 6 rocket, and has won up to 300 million euros in funding from the French government that is billed as a standard launch contract but featured payments years before the first launch.
In June, MaiaSpace was able to attract four French ministers — Defense, Commerce, Economy and Research — to witness the less-than-spectacular inauguration of a rocket integration facility in Vernon, France.
At the event, then-Defense Minister Sébastien Lecornu, now French prime minister, said the French military would need 3-4 Maia launches per year later this decade as the ministry increases its space portfolio.
The MaiaSpace vehicle has a reusable first stage designed to land on a barge offshore. Credit: MaiaSpace
MaiaSpace was granted the use of the launch pad at Europe’s Guiana Space Center used by Russia’s Soyuz rocket before the French-Russian cooperation stopped in early 2022 with Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. The start of the war left 36 OneWeb satellites stranded in Russia, awaiting launch from a Russian launch pad.
The half-dozen other startup launch operators will be sharing a refurbished pad at the Guiana site.
“With the goal of 20 launches per year from an existing launch pad in French Guiana by the start of the next decade, using reusable and expendable versions, MaiaSpace brings together all the conditions for becoming a major actor in European space transport,” Leroy said.
The two-stage Maia rocket can launch 1,500 kilograms of payload to inclined low-Earth orbit in expendable version, and up to 4,000 kilograms using a kick stage but returning the first stage for reuse.