ESA signs €158.9 million first major European Launcher Challenge contract with PLD Space

The European Space Agency has signed its first contract with PLD Space under the European Launcher Challenge, worth 158.9 million euros. The Alicante-based company will use the funds to increase MIURA 5 launch cadence and develop new orbital capabilities. The European Space Agency (ESA) has begun signing the first contracts under its European Launcher Challenge (ELC), the programme through which Europe is trying to end its reliance on foreign launchers to put satellites into orbit. Among those selected is PLD Space, the Elche-based company that in 2023 took its MIURA 1 demonstration rocket to the edge of space. The contract, worth 158.9 million euros and funded mainly by Spain with German backing, positions the company as one of the central pillars of Europe’s future launcher ecosystem. The agreement is divided into two components. The first aims to consolidate the commercial service of MIURA 5 and progressively ramp up its launch rate through to 2030, at a time when the company says it is already seeing growing commercial interest in the rocket in international markets. The second, focused on what PLD Space calls "Upgraded Orbital Capacity", will fund upgrades to MIURA 5 so it can carry more payload and reach more distant orbits, as well as incorporating propulsive landing, the first step towards reusing the rocket. The precursor to MIURA Next According to the company, a large part of the subsystems developed under this orbital-improvement programme will not remain confined to MIURA 5: they are designed to be transferred directly to MIURA Next, the future family of heavy launchers with which PLD Space wants to make the leap in scale. The idea is that each technical improvement certified now will shorten schedules and reduce risks when it is the turn of the larger launcher. "The selection of PLD Space by ESA confirms the maturity of the roadmap we have been building for years," summed up Ezequiel Sánchez, the company’s executive chairman, who places the contract within a trajectory that began with MIURA 1 and that, in his view, should end with the transfer of critical technology to the heavy launcher. PLD Space’s deal is not the only contract ESA has signed in this round. Germany’s Rocket Factory Augsburg has received 186.9 million euros for its RFA One, which will operate from Scotland’s SaxaVord base, and Isar Aerospace has secured 197.8 million for its Spectrum. The three were part of a group of five finalists, completed by MaiaSpace and Orbex, that ESA shortlisted in July 2025 after receiving twelve proposals from across Europe. The ELC was launched in 2023 with the aim of having, before 2030, a European successor to Ariane 6 that does not depend on a single operator, and at the ministerial meeting in Bremen in November 2025 the member states doubled their funding commitment to 900 million euros. For PLD Space, the contract comes on top of the 42 million it has already received from CDTI through the Aerospace PERTE, and arrives in the final phase of development of MIURA 5, the orbital rocket that is set to succeed MIURA 1.