The Exploration Company hat dies direkt geteilt
Yesterday, Bikini made it to space! And Europe regained its autonomous access. However, the Ariane 6 upper stage faced an anomaly, and the rocket could not launch our capsule in its reentry trajectory. So, while our spacecraft behaved as planned, it is still flying in space attached to the upper stage of Ariane 6: we were not able to perform our atmospheric reentry. What does that mean for The Exploration Company? 1. Most importantly, our strategy and our journey continue as planned. Our next capsule, Mission Possible, is on-track to fly in H1-2025 with SpaceX. And we are in the middle of our Preliminary Design Review with ESA, for our final vehicle Nyx. 2. While we did not gather the expected reentry data, this is not a problem for our next flights. Indeed, we are not using the same thermal protection as Bikini, and we already collected data for our new thermal protection via plasma tests. 3. We have gathered critical learnings: e.g., we have mastered complex manufacturing processes, we have de-risked our supply chain, we have obtained the re-entry license from the government… and we have passed all steps to qualify our capsule and launch it to space. This has trained the team to the utmost level of professionalism and has developed technical assets for our next flights. Of course, we are disappointed that the flight did not happen as expected. We anticipated and accepted this risk. And our team, our investors and our partners know that we did everything we could, to make it a success. So, everyone stays committed to the next steps. I am proud of my team. I am grateful to our investors and our partners for this achievement. The journey continues and we fly our next capsule in a few months!