The Alicante company PLD Space, creator of the Miura space rockets, will begin work this year on its new launch base in Kurú (French Guiana), from which it will carry out commercial flights of its Miura 5.
The inaugural flight of the Miura 5 is scheduled for the end of 2025 and, from then on, commercial missions will increase in frequency to a total of 30 by 2030, the co-founder and general director, Raúl Verdú, explained this Monday in Paris.
“We hope to begin these works from September-October of this year.” “For us it will be a fundamental milestone to begin offering our commercial launch services into space from the best spaceport in the world, which is Kurú,” he added.
Kurú has been, for decades, the launch base of the European Arianespace consortium, main partner of the European Space Agency (ESA).
The project foresees an investment of just over ten million euros for the construction of both the buildings and the launch ramp, on a plot of land of more than 15,000 square meters.
The Miura 5 rockets will be assembled in these facilities, whose components will arrive from those that PLD Space is expanding at the Teruel airport, and will have, as far as possible, local personnel from Guyana.
“It is an investment that, in the end, will reach the entire value chain of the sector, both industrial and aerospace, in Spain and France,” he added.
The head of PLD Space, based in the Elche Business Park, highlighted that the current schedule foresees “launching the first Miura 5 at the end of 2025” and, from there, progressively increasing from five flights in 2026 to “launching 30 rockets per year in 2030.”
The Miura 5 will have a payload of 540 kilos for Sun-synchronous orbits of 500 kilometers and 1,080 kilos for equatorial orbits of 500 kilometers.
Verdú, who presented the PLD Space projects to the press in Paris this Monday before participating in a space forum in Brussels, highlighted the good cooperation with the French authorities, especially with the National Center for Space Studies (CNES), who “has made the project his own.”
However, he has warned that although many competing companies are emerging, many will not survive. “The winner will not be the first to reach (Earth) orbit, but the most reliable. “That he can throw repeatedly and without errors,” he predicted.
He added that they are working with the European Space Agency (ESA) within the future program of small space launchers, although he recalled that the organization is still immersed in the process of developing its policy in that sector.
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