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German rocket maker Isar Aerospace successfully reached orbit for the first time over the weekend, marking a milestone for Europe's commercial space industry as the company looks to ramp up launches to meet what it says is booming demand. The Munich-based company's Spectrum rocket reached orbit on Saturday and successfully deployed its payloads in low Earth orbit, an achievement that came on only its second test flight. Chief Commercial Officer Stella Guillen told CNBC on Monday that the company was now focused on scaling production, saying the space industry was "desperate" for additional launch capacity and that Isar had a pipeline worth more than 10 billion euros ($11.6 billion). The startup did not immediately clarify how much of that represented contracted orders. "The demand is so big," Guillen told CNBC's "Squawk Box Europe." "There's a lot of new ... constellations and new projects that have come out, and actually they're financed." The company is focused on increasing production and launch frequency following Saturday's successful flight, Guillen said, but warned that Europe's launch infrastructure would need to expand to support the industry's growth. While the scale of Isar's operations is currently dwarfed by those of U.S. competitors like Elon Musk's SpaceX, the company has big ambitions. "Right now, it's all about scalability, so industrialization is a huge thing for us, and we are ramping up," she said. "It really is about scaling and being able to launch… not one rocket but hundreds of rockets." The privately held Munich-based company has attracted backing from investors including Porsche, venture capital firms Lakestar and HV Capital, and the NATO Innovation Fund. It raised 270 million euros in a Series D funding round in June to help scale production and expand its global launch network. It's considered one of Europe's most encouraging startups, as the bloc seeks to create a rival to SpaceX and a homegrown commercial launch industry. "This marks the beginning of a new era," Germany's Chancellor Friedrich Merz said Sunday on X, while EU defense and space commissioner Andrius Kubilius said: "Europe's independent access to space just got a major boost."
document fetched 2026-09-08 02:57 · canonical https://cnbc.com/2026/09/07/isar-aerospace-spacex-rival-rocket-launch.html