The European Space Agency has signed its first contract with PLD Space under the European Launcher Challenge, worth €158.9 million. The Alicante-based firm will use the funds to boost MIURA 5 launch frequency 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 seeking to end its reliance on foreign launchers to put satellites into orbit. Among the companies selected is PLD Space, the Elche-based firm that in 2023 launched its MIURA 1 demonstrator rocket on a suborbital flight.
ADVERTISEMENT
ADVERTISEMENT
The contract, worth 158.9 million euros and financed mainly by Spain with German co-funding, positions the company as one of the central pillars of Europe’s future launcher ecosystem.
The agreement is split into two components. The first aims to consolidate the commercial service of MIURA 5 and progressively ramp up its launch rate until 2030, at a time when the company says it is already seeing growing commercial interest in the rocket on international markets.
The second, focused on what PLD Space describes as "enhanced orbital capability", will fund upgrades to MIURA 5 so it can carry heavier payloads and reach more distant orbits, as well as incorporating propulsive landing, the first step towards reusing the rocket.
The prelude to MIURA Next
According to the company, many of the subsystems developed under this orbital-improvement programme will not stay with MIURA 5: they are designed to be transferred directly to MIURA Next, the future family of heavy launchers with which PLD Space wants to scale up. The idea is that each technical upgrade certified now will shorten timelines and reduce risks when it is the turn of the larger launcher.
"ESA’s selection of PLD Space confirms the maturity of the roadmap we have been building for years," summed up Ezequiel Sánchez, the company’s executive chairman, who sees the contract as part of a trajectory that began with MIURA 1 and which, in his view, should end with the transfer of critical technology to the heavy launcher.
PLD Space’s is not the only contract ESA has awarded in this round. Germany’s Rocket Factory Augsburg has received 186.9 million euros for its RFA One, which will operate from the SaxaVord spaceport in Scotland, 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, which ESA shortlisted in July 2025 after receiving twelve proposals from across Europe.
The ELC was launched in 2023 with the aim, among others, of having a European successor to Ariane 6 in place before 2030 that does not depend on a single operator, and at the ministerial meeting in Bremen in November 2025 the member states doubled down on their funding commitment, taking it to 900 million euros.
For PLD Space, the contract adds to the 42 million it had already received from the CDTI through the Aerospace PERTE, and comes as the MIURA 5 enters the final phase of its development, the orbital rocket that is due to succeed MIURA 1.
