Rocket Factory Augsburg was founded in 2018 with the vision to enable businesses to better understand, connect and protect our Earth.
We are nearing completion of the development of the RFA ONE launch system, planned for test flights in 2024 and open for commercial service thereafter from multiple European launch sites. Recently the company successfully completed the Integrated System Test campaign for the second stage, making RFA the first private European company to hot fire a rocket stage with a staged-combustion engine for its full duration.
RFA ONE will offer access to an unmatched range of orbits, from LEO to GEO and beyond lunar to interplanetary, thanks to its integrated Redshift orbital transfer vehicle, while delivering the highest lift-off performance in the small launch vehicle segment. We believe that RFA ONE can become the workhorse launch vehicle for a wide range of European missions, from aggregating small satellites on a rideshare arrangement to dedicating launches to larger spacecraft or constellations, and enabling breakthrough missions for science and space exploration.
RFA ONE offers a lift-off capacity of 1,300kg to a reference sun-synchronous orbit, 550km altitude mission for a nominal price of 9 million Euros, making it as economical on a price per kg basis as SpaceX dedicated rideshare missions. RFA proposes to reserve 500kg capacity on selected launch slots to LEO for the needs of ESA at the same highly attractive pricing, with the possibility to expand to larger payloads, on a much more frequent launch cadence and from European territory instead of relying on sporadic, foreign rideshare launch options.
RFA has plans to expand its family of launch systems to support European ambitions in space. RFA TWO, with capacity of 10-ton to LEO and 3.5-ton to GTO, is currently being explored for commercial introduction before the end of the decade, including a fully reusable variant for even more cost-effective access to space.
