OrbeX Announces Arianespace Partnership

Today, Orbex and the European giant, Arianespace, announced that they had signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) agreement, signalling the beginning of a new partnership in European spaceflight.

What is an MoU agreement?

An MoU is an agreement between 2 parties that expresses the intent to collaborate a shared goal or shared line of action.

OrbeX and Arianespace not only plan to benefit each other with this agreement, but also customers looking to launch small satellite constellations. OrbeX and Arianespace plan on providing a "Flexible solution for Low Earth Orbit (LEO) payloads" by using light and heavy launchers to establish a customer's initial satellite constellation, and then use light launchers to provide precise injections for a smaller amount of satellites, as well as replenishment of the constellation.

CEO of OrbeX, Martin Coates had this to say about the agreement, "This collaboration holds a lot of promise for the European launch market and we’re excited to see where we can take this. We are clearly very pleased that Arianespace has chosen to work with Orbex. We already have a strong position in the emerging European microlauncher market and this cooperation could take us even further commercially.”

Who is OrbeX?

OrbeX is a British small sat launcher start-up company, operated out of Scotland. They are currently developing their first launch vehicle called "Prime". OrbeX Prime is a 19-metre long, two-stage rocket designed to transport small satellites weighing up to 180kg into Low Earth Orbit. Orbex Prime is powered by a renewable fuel, bio-propane, which allows the rocket to reduce carbon emissions significantly compared to other similarly sized rockets being developed elsewhere around the world. A study by the University of Exeter showed that a single launch of the Orbex Prime rocket will produce up to 96 per cent lower carbon emissions than comparable space launch systems using fossil fuels.

In March this year, OrbeX announced that construction had commenced on their launch site, Space Hub Sutherland, which is located in the North of the Scottish Mainland.