D2.4 ESA Preparation for Future European Heavy and Super Heavy Launch Systems
Symposium: D2. IAF SPACE TRANSPORTATION SOLUTIONS AND INNOVATIONS SYMPOSIUM
Session: 4. Future Space Transportation Systems
Day: Wednesday 7 October 2026
Time: 10:15 GMT+3
Room: Hall 23
ESA is charting the future of European space transportation with a set of activities assessing new approaches for the economical sustainability of future European heavy and super heavy launch systems with dedicated evaluations of the business plan of the associated development with private investments, together with system performance analysis enabling to anchor the financial results with credible reference market and launch system design assumptions.
Indeed, today ESA’s Ariane 6 and Vega-C rockets are poised to maintain Europe’s access to space as reliable workhorses for governments, academia and industry over the next years, and a disruptive programme has now been initiated at CM25 with the European Launchers Challenge (ELC) to foster the emergence of new actors and their small launchers initiatives. However, evolving markets forecasts show rapid growth for mega constellations deployments, in-space operations and services, and space exploration, resulting in a shift of the profitable market segment towards higher payload deployment capacities (mass and volume), higher launch frequency, and lower launch cost per kg into orbit, for which reusable heavy and super heavy launch systems are considered an enabling capability. This highlights the need for Europe to support a long-term roadmap enabling on one side the necessary European resilience and sovereignty for access to space to secure such applications and, on the other side, future European launch operators to secure their share with profits on such markets.
The paper will provide an insight into the status of the ESA activities performed on Heavy and Super Heavy Reusable Launch Systems, integrating ESA internal studies outcomes complemented by results from past and ongoing industrial studies, with focus on: a) launch systems use-cases, b) launch demand market scenarios, c) launch systems design aspects, d) launch systems performance optimization, e) launch systems financial assessments, f) end-to-end business plans, with sensitivity analysis with respect to key assumptions on launch service costs, prices, market share, cadences, private investments and public-private risk-sharing models.