During a press briefing following the 332nd ESA Council meeting, ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher announced that the agency will publish a call for proposals for the European Launcher Challenge in the coming week.

Announced in November 2023, the European Launcher Challenge is intended to support the development of sovereign launch capabilities and, ultimately, a successor to Ariane 6. While few specifics have been confirmed, early indications suggest the programme will offer multiple awards of €150 million each.

During his annual press briefing in January 2025, ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher stated that the agency would publish a call for proposals, which the agency calls an Invitation to Tender, “around the February timeframe.” However, this tentative timeline wasn’t realized. The Director General has now said that the call will be published next week.

French launch startup MaiaSpace has secured its first commercial customer, signing a launch services agreement with in-space logistics company Exotrail.

MaiaSpace is developing a small, two-stage, partially reusable rocket called Maia that will be capable of delivering 1,500 kilograms to low Earth orbit when launched in its expendable configuration. With the addition of its Colibri kick stage, the 50-meter Maia rocket will add an additional 1,000 kilograms to its payload capacity. MaiaSpace currently expects to launch the inaugural flight of Maia from the old Soyuz launch facility at the Guiana Space Centre in 2026.

On 20 March, MaiaSpace announced that it had signed a multi-launch agreement with Exotrail to carry its Spacevan orbital transfer vehicle from “as early as 2027.”

In a 12 March update, Isar Aerospace announced that the Norwegian Space Agency had awarded the German rocket builder the contract to launch both AOS-D and AOS-P. The satellites will be launched aboard a Spectrum rocket from the Andøya Spaceport in Norway by 2028.

La misión #HERA (de defensa planetaria) de @esa ya está por Marte y ha pillado a Deimos en la foto. Todos los datos en el enlace https://www.esa.int/Space/_Safety/Hera/Hera/_asteroid/_mission/_spies/_Mars/_s/_Deimos/_moon

In a 28 February POLSA update, the agency confirmed that the information regarding the uncontrolled re-entry of the Falcon 9 second stage had been sent to the wrong email addresses at the Ministry of National Defence.

Further compounding the crisis, the Polish Space Agency was hacked on 2 March, forcing it to “immediately disconnect from the Internet.”

“A cybersecurity incident has occurred at POLSA. The relevant authorities and institutions have been informed,” POLSA explained in response to European Spaceflight questioning. “An analysis of the situation is currently underway. To secure the data after the breach, POLSA’s network was immediately disconnected from the Internet. We will keep you updated.”

The POLSA systems were officially restored on 5 March “in cooperation with the services and institutions responsible for cybersecurity.”

On 11 March, the Minister of Development and Technology announced that POLSA President Grzegorz Wrochna had been officially dismissed. The statement did not include any information about his replacement.

Welcome everyone! It's time for the first operational launch of Ariane 6!

This follows a previous launch attempt earlier in the week which was scrubbed due to GSE issues.

| Scheduled for (UTC) | 2025-03-06 16:24 | |

|

| | Scheduled for (local) | 2025-03-06 13:24 (GFT) | | Launch site | ELA-4, Guiana Space Centre, French Guiana | | Launch vehicle | Ariane 62 | | Payload | CSO-3 | | Mission success criteria | Successful launch and deployment of payloads into Sun-Synchronous Orbit |

Livestreams

| Stream | Link | |

|

| | ESA | https://www.youtube.com/@EuropeanSpaceAgency/streams | | Arianespace (English) | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yvvUCkAUqvI | | Arianespace (Français) | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I-45oYBZHOs | | Space Affairs | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAEVfzW5xWc | | The Launch Pad | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gsbYwkOcy6M |

Stats

☑️ 1st Ariane 6 mission of 2025, 2nd overall

☑️ 1st Arianespace mission of 2025, 300th overall

Payload info

The French CSO (Composante Spatiale Optique) high-resolution reconnaissance satellites are the optical space component of the MUSIS program that will replace the current Hélios 2 military observation satellites.

CNES, the French space agency, has notified Astrium that the DGA (Direction Générale de l'Armement), the French arms procurement agency, has awarded the company a 795€ million contract for two satellites for the CSO program. The contract also includes an option for a third satellite.

As the prime contractor for the CSO satellites programme, Astrium will provide the agile platform and avionics, and will also be responsible for the integration work, testing, and delivery of the satellites to CNES. Thales Alenia Space will provide Astrium with very high-resolution optical instruments.

Please feel free to post updates and questions in the comments!

German rocket builder Isar Aerospace has signed a launch services agreement with Japanese in-space logistics company ElevationSpace, securing a Spectrum rocket flight for the AOBA re-entry demonstrator.

As the company prepares for Spectrum’s inaugural flight, it has secured a new customer for the rocket. On 4 March, ElevationSpace announced that it had booked a Spectrum flight scheduled for the second half of 2026. The rocket will carry the company’s AOBA re-entry demonstrator, which will serve as an initial test of the company’s ELS-R “space utilization and recovery” vehicle.