Credit: Isar Aerospace / Simon Fischer / Wingmen Media / ESA / S. Corvaja
The European Space Agency has awarded launch service contracts to Avio and Isar Aerospace under its Flight Ticket Initiative.
Announced in October 2023, the Flight Ticket Initiative is a programme run jointly by ESA and the European Union that offers subsidised flight opportunities for European companies and organisations seeking to demonstrate new satellite technologies in orbit. In May 2024, ESA and the European Union selected Arianespace, Isar Aerospace, PLD Space, Orbex, and Rocket Factory Augsburg as part of a pool of launch service providers for Flight Ticket Initiative missions. At the time, ESA noted that each launch opportunity would carry a maximum award of €5 million.
On 27 August 2025, ESA announced that it had awarded Avio and Isar Aerospace the first launch contracts under the Flight Ticket Initiative.
“These agreements demonstrate the trust European institutions have in our launch services,” said Isar Aerospace CEO Daniel Metzler. “It marks a key step in strengthening Europe’s independent space access and sets the foundation for future institutional missions under other programs like the European Launcher Challenge.”
The two contracts awarded to Isar Aerospace will support the launches of the ISISpace Cassini and Infinite Orbits Tom & Jerry missions, both set to fly aboard Isar Aerospace Spectrum rockets from Andøya Spaceport in Norway. According to Isar Aerospace, the launches are expected to take place “from 2026 onwards.”
The Cassini mission will consist of three small satellites that will carry a variety of payloads for companies across Europe as part of the In-Orbit Demonstration (IOD) and In-Orbit Verification (IOV) programmes, which are managed jointly by ESA and the European Union. The mission will host payloads from IENAI Space, EICAS Automazione, Arcsec, INVENT, IEAP-CTU, Deimos, SkyLabs, and Astrolight.
According to ESA, the Tom & Jerry mission will involve the launch of two satellites, one a chaser and the other a target. The mission is expected to demonstrate rendezvous and capture capabilities essential for debris removal and in-orbit servicing operations.
The three contracts awarded to Avio will support the launches of Persei’s E.T. Pack deorbit demonstrator, the Pluto+ CubeSat from the German aerospace agency DLR, and Grasp’s GapMap-1 greenhouse-gas satellite. The missions will all fly as secondary passengers aboard Vega C flights from the Guiana Space Centre.
The Persei E.T. Pack mission will test a kilometre-long aluminium tether, designed to slow and deorbit a satellite without propellant while maintaining stability and avoiding collision risks.
DLR’s Pluto+ mission will demonstrate a compact, high-performance avionics system and a deployable flexible solar array that will deliver 100 watts of power, demonstrating that technologies typically reserved for larger spacecraft can be implemented on small platforms.
Finally, Grasp’s GapMap-1 will be the second satellite in its constellation of Earth observation satellites. It will carry a short-wave infrared spectrometer to detect greenhouse gases.