WASHINGTON — German launch vehicle startup Isar Aerospace has raised 150 million euros ($174 million) in the form of a convertible bond from an American investor.
Isar announced June 25 it raised the funding from Eldridge Industries, a Miami-based company that invests in a variety of industries, including technology. The investment is in the form of a convertible bond, a debt instrument that can later be converted into equity in the company.
Isar said the funding would support work to expand launch capabilities and series production facilities at its headquarters near Munich.
“We are catering to the rising global demand for satellite launch services and provide global markets and governments with independent and flexible access to space,” Daniel Metzler, chief executive of Isar, said in a statement. “This investment demonstrates strong confidence from global markets in our efforts to build a new space champion.”
Isar is developing Spectrum, a small launch vehicle capable of placing up to 1,000 kilograms into low Earth orbit. The company performed the inaugural launch of Spectrum March 30 from Andøya Spaceport in northern Norway, but the vehicle lost attitude control less than half a minute after liftoff and crashed into waters adjacent to the launch pad.
While the vehicle failed to reach orbit, Isar executives said at the time of the launch that they considered it a success nonetheless because it gathered important flight data. “We didn’t reach orbit but we learned a ton from it, and it sets us up very well for the second flight that’s ahead of us,” Metzler said in a briefing just after the launch.
“We ended up doing exactly what we wanted to do for a test flight,” Stella Guillen, chief commercial officer of Isar Aerospace, said of that launch during a panel at the SmallSat Europe conference in Amsterdam May 27. “We had a beautiful liftoff and 30 seconds of flight, enough to capture a lot of data, so we’re very, very happy.”
She didn’t discuss what caused the loss of control on that launch but said Isar was aiming to perform a second flight of Spectrum before the end of the year.
“We are seeing a lot of demand right now, especially in Europe,” she said, noting that Isar has several contracts for multiple launches that extend as late as 2032. “We’re happy to be in a good place at the moment.”
Isar is expected to be one of the leading companies for the European Launcher Challenge, a competition run by the European Space Agency that will offer up to 169 million euros per company for launching European institutional payloads as well as a “launch service capacity upgrade demonstration.”
ESA officials said at the Paris Air Show last week that they received 12 proposals from companies for the challenge and are currently performing technical evaluations of them. ESA plans to announce in July which proposals passed that review and will be eligible for funding from the agency’s member states at the ESA ministerial conference in late November.
