Rocket Factory Augsburg AG (RFA) is a German

NewSpace Private spaceflight is any spaceflight development that is not conducted by a government agency, such as NASA or ESA. During the early decades of the Space Age, the government space agencies of the Soviet Union and United States pione ...

start-up located in

Augsburg Augsburg ( , ; ; ) is a city in the Bavaria, Bavarian part of Swabia, Germany, around west of the Bavarian capital Munich. It is a College town, university town and the regional seat of the Swabia (administrative region), Swabia with a well ...

. It was founded in 2018 with the mission to build rockets just like cars. Its

multistage rocket A multistage rocket or step rocket is a launch vehicle that uses two or more rocket ''stages'', each of which contains its own engines and propellant. A ''tandem'' or ''serial'' stage is mounted on top of another stage; a ''parallel'' stage is ...

, RFA One, is currently under development. , it had been scheduled to launch during the summer of 2024; however, an anomaly during a

first stage First stage or First Stage may refer to: * First Stage Children's Theater, a professional American children's theater based in Milwaukee, Wisconsin * First stage (rocketry), the first stage of a multistage rocket * the first reading of a bill in t ...

static fire Launch vehicle system tests assess the readiness of a launch system to safely reach orbit. Launch vehicles undergo system tests before they launch. Wet dress rehearsals (WDR) and more extensive static fire tests prepare fully assembled launch veh ...

test in August 2024 resulted in destruction of the stage, and the launch has been postponed.

History

General

Rocket Factory Augsburg was founded as a spin-off of

OHB SE OHB SE, headquartered in Bremen, is a European space and technology group specializing in the development and implementation of complete space systems, the production of components for various launcher programs as well as the operation of satell ...

in 2018 by Jörn Spurmann ( CCO of RFA), Stefan Brieschenk ( COO of RFA), Hans Steiniger (

CEO A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a chief executive or managing director, is the top-ranking corporate officer charged with the management of an organization, usually a company or a nonprofit organization. CEOs find roles in variou ...

of MT Aerospace) and Marco Fuchs (

). As of 2021, Spurmann, Brieschenk, Steiniger, Fuchs, Stefan Tweraser (

of RFA), and Jean-Jacques Dordain (

Chairman The chair, also chairman, chairwoman, or chairperson, is the presiding officer of an organized group such as a board, committee, or deliberative assembly. The person holding the office, who is typically elected or appointed by members of the gro ...

) made up the board of RFA. OHB SE and Apollo Capital Partners GmbH are investors. In March 2021 RFA relocated to a new headquarters facility in Augsburg. The company employs more than 300 people from more than 30 countries. In April 2022 RFA won the second round of the "DLR microlauncher competition". As part of this contract RFA will launch 150 kg for the

German Aerospace Center The German Aerospace Center (, abbreviated DLR, literally ''German Center for Air- and Space-flight'') is the national center for aerospace, energy and transportation research of Germany, founded in 1969. It is headquartered in Cologne with 3 ...

(DLR) aboard each of the first two RFA One flights. RFA will also receive €11 million to further the development of its launch vehicle. Testing of the assembled RFA One vehicle began in August 2021 with cryogenic pressure testing on a prototype first stage, and hot fire tests of the Helix rocket engine began in July 2022, with an integrated stage+engine system test of 280 seconds duration in March 2023. By May 2024, a hot fire test with five Helix engines was performed at

SaxaVord Spaceport SaxaVord Spaceport, previously known as Shetland Space Centre, is a UK spaceport located on the Lamba Ness peninsula on Unst, the most northerly of the inhabited Shetland Islands off the coast of Scotland. The site is near the RAF Saxa Vord ...

. On Monday, 19 August 2024, a

test of the RFA One

with all nine engines, the same hardware that was slated to fly on the maiden flight of RFA One, was performed. An anomaly occurred that resulted in a fire, subsequent explosion, loss of the stage, and significant damage to the launch mount.RFA first stage destroyed in static-fire test

SpaceNews ''SpaceNews'' is a print and digital publication that covers business and political news in the space and satellite industry. ''SpaceNews'' provides news, commentary and analysis to an audience of government officials, politicians and executives ...

, 19 August 2024.Rocket engine explodes during test at Shetland spaceport

BBC News BBC News is an operational business division of the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) responsible for the gathering and broadcasting of news and current affairs in the UK and around the world. The department is the world's largest broad ...

, 19 August 2024 Ground testing of a new RFA One launch vehicle is slated for 2025, and 2025 is also the revised estimate for an initial orbital launch attempt.

Locations

RFA is headquartered in Augsburg, close to

Munich Munich is the capital and most populous city of Bavaria, Germany. As of 30 November 2024, its population was 1,604,384, making it the third-largest city in Germany after Berlin and Hamburg. Munich is the largest city in Germany that is no ...

, with composite material manufacturing in Portugal, test facilities in Sweden and Scotland, and a launch facility in Scotland. Since March 2021, the main factory and offices have been located at Berliner Allee 65, Augsburg. The company has a team based at the rocket engine development and test site

Esrange , , , , , , , , , Esrange Space Center is a rocket range and research centre located about 40 kilometers east of the town of Kiruna in northern Sweden. It is a base for scientific research with high-altitude balloons, investigation of the a ...

Kiruna (; ; ; ) is the northernmost Stad (Sweden), city in Sweden, situated in the province of Lapland, Sweden, Lapland. It had 17,002 inhabitants in 2016 and is the seat of Kiruna Municipality (population: 23,167 in 2016) in Norrbotten County. The c ...

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden, is a Nordic countries, Nordic country located on the Scandinavian Peninsula in Northern Europe. It borders Norway to the west and north, and Finland to the east. At , Sweden is the largest Nordic count ...

. Since June 2021 RFA has had a Portuguese subsidiary, "RFA Portugal Unipessoal LDA," located in

Matosinhos Matosinhos () is a City#Portugal, city and a Concelho, municipality in the district of Porto District, Porto in Portugal. The municipality covers an area of approximately and had 172,557 inhabitants in 2021. It is bordered by the municipalities o ...

, to develop and qualify composite structures for RFA One. In January 2023, RFA announced that it had secured exclusive access to Launch Pad Fredo at the

in Scotland. The company said that the multi-year partnership included a "double-digit million pound investment" in SaxaVord by RFA. The company will use the facility to launch RFA One launch vehicle to polar and Sun-synchronous orbits. The maiden flight of the RFA One is planned to be launched from SaxaVord. On 29 January 2024, RFA announced plans to launch rockets monthly from SaxaVord Spaceport on

Unst Unst (; ) is one of the North Isles of the Shetland Islands, Scotland. It is the northernmost of the inhabited British Isles and is the third-largest island in Shetland after Shetland Mainland, Mainland and Yell (island), Yell. It has an area o ...

in the

Shetland Islands Shetland (until 1975 spelled Zetland), also called the Shetland Islands, is an archipelago in Scotland Scotland is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. It contains nearly one-third of the Uni ...

, aiming to be Europe's first-ever launch delivering a satellite into orbit. After a

test anomaly in August 2024, the company anticipates its initial launch in 2025, following extensive testing and assembly in Augsburg and on-site preparation.

Launch vehicle

Rocket Factory Augsburg's first

launch vehicle A launch vehicle is typically a rocket-powered vehicle designed to carry a payload (a crewed spacecraft or satellites) from Earth's surface or lower atmosphere to outer space. The most common form is the ballistic missile-shaped multistage ...

is RFA One, a three-stage rocket designed to launch

small satellite A small satellite, miniaturized satellite, or smallsat is a satellite of low mass and size, usually under . While all such satellites can be referred to as "small", different classifications are used to categorize them based on mass. Satellites c ...

s and payloads of up to 1,300 kg into

polar orbit A polar orbit is one in which a satellite passes above or nearly above both poles of the body being orbited (usually a planet such as the Earth, but possibly another body such as the Moon or Sun) on each revolution. It has an inclination of abo ...

s. The vehicle is long with a diameter of . It has been in development since 2019. The vehicle is designed to transport small and micro-satellites into

Low Earth orbit A low Earth orbit (LEO) is an geocentric orbit, orbit around Earth with a orbital period, period of 128 minutes or less (making at least 11.25 orbits per day) and an orbital eccentricity, eccentricity less than 0.25. Most of the artificial object ...

(LEO) and

Sun-synchronous orbit A Sun-synchronous orbit (SSO), also called a heliosynchronous orbit, is a nearly polar orbit around a planet, in which the satellite passes over any given point of the planet's surface at the same local mean solar time. More technically, it is ...

(SSO). The first stage is powered by nine Helix engines, each producing 100kN of thrust. The second stage will use one engine, a vacuum-optimised version of the Helix engine. The Helix engine uses rocket-grade kerosene, known as

RP-1 RP-1 (Rocket Propellant-1 or Refined Petroleum-1) and similar fuels like RG-1 and T-1 are highly refined kerosene formulations used as rocket fuel. Liquid-fueled rockets that use RP-1 as fuel are known as kerolox rockets. In their engines, RP- ...

, fuel and

liquid oxygen Liquid oxygen, sometimes abbreviated as LOX or LOXygen, is a clear cyan liquid form of dioxygen . It was used as the oxidizer in the first liquid-fueled rocket invented in 1926 by Robert H. Goddard, an application which is ongoing. Physical ...

oxidizer. During 2020 the company redesigned Helix from a

gas-generator cycle The gas-generator cycle, also referred to as the GG cycle or colloquially as an open cycle, is one of the most commonly used power cycles in bipropellant liquid rocket engines. Propellant is burned in a gas generator (analogous to, but distinct ...

to an oxygen-rich

staged combustion cycle The staged combustion cycle (sometimes known as topping cycle, preburner cycle, or closed cycle) is a power cycle of a bipropellant rocket engine. In the staged combustion cycle, propellant flows through multiple combustion chambers, and is th ...

. Some components used in early engine versions, such as the turbopump, were bought from the Ukrainian company Pivdenmash to shorten development time. Later versions of these components have been developed internally. The third stage, named Redshift, will function as an orbital transfer vehicle (OTV). Since its Fenix engine can be fired multiple times, it is able to reach different orbits within a single flight and complete different missions for different customers. It will use a non-hydrazine based, relightable green propellant.

References

External links