ESA space transportation accelerates disruptive innovation with FIRST!

Following a call for ideas, ESA held an online “pitch day”, where European technology providers presented promising ideas to an audience of prime contractors, investors, ESA Member State delegates and ESA experts. This event focused on technologies related to composite structures, lightweight stainless-steel structures, joining techniques and reusable, flexible thermal protections – as might be used to shield a rocket rear part from the heat of recovery flight and landing manoeuvres, so that it could be refurbished for re-use.

Of 88 ideas submitted, 25 were selected for presentation at the pitch day.

The pitch day was followed by release of an open competition invitation to tender on these techniques. Technology developers are invited to present commercial use cases, along with a plan to manufacture and test a demonstrator.

Evaluation of submissions will begin in November and ESA plans to select winners in time to issue contracts by the end of 2023. Projects should run for about nine months.

This initiative falls under an ESA programme known as FIRST! – for Future Innovation Research in Space Transportation. FIRST! is part of the agency’s Future Launchers Preparatory Programme (FLPP), aiming to identify innovative and promising technology disruptors with high commercial interest from both new and legacy industry players.

Then, by supporting a rapid pace of prototyping and testing, FIRST! will speed the journey from concept to deployment.

This FIRST! approach to technology development is designed to help Europe realise a high-performance, cost-effective space transportation system for the 2025-2050 period. ESA studies indicate that applications like constellation deployment and deep-space exploration may soon rely on routine access to space with reusable rockets launching payloads to high parking orbits; from there, a “hub and spoke” in-space logistics network will move them to their final destinations.

Introducing the pitch day, ESA’s Head of Future Space Transportation Preparation, Jérôme Breteau, said: “We are fostering a diversification of the industrial base [and] a diversification of the product – and this is why we are here today: to identify, select and support disrupting technologies with a transformed procurement approach, with more competition and a more hands-off approach.”

To that end, FIRST! aims to develop a set of building-block technologies that can enable development of the vehicles and systems needed for increasingly ambitious activity in space.

Future FIRST! initiatives are likely focus on technology areas such as avionics, guidance-navigation-control and propulsion.