Rocket Factory Augsburg

RFA ONE is a three-stage rocket 30 metres tall, carrying up to 1,300 kilograms to a polar orbit at 500 kilometres. The first stage clusters nine Helix engines burning oxygen and kerosene on a staged combustion cycle, which no other Western small launch company attempted. RFA's argument for taking on that difficulty is arithmetic: staged combustion runs about seven per cent more efficient than the gas-generator engines its competitors chose, and on a vehicle this size that converts into roughly thirty per cent more payload.

The company is a spin-off of OHB, the German space group, which still owns most of it. That parentage is the second bet and it cuts both ways, bringing an institutional supply chain, engineering depth and customer access, against the question of whether an incumbent can build a startup-priced launcher. Its nearest rival, Isar Aerospace, is also German, also chasing the same ESA money, and independent.

The cycle that is the bet is also what destroyed the rocket. In August 2024, during a first-stage hot fire on the pad at SaxaVord in Shetland, an anomaly in one engine, most likely a fire in an oxygen turbopump, propagated across the stage despite an emergency stop and destroyed the vehicle weeks before it was due to launch. Recovery took eighteen months and a rebuild of the engines, the tank pressurisation system, and the procedures meant to stop a fire spreading between nine clustered engines. Stages returned to SaxaVord in February 2026, all nine engines were integrated in June, and a launch window opened on 10 August. On 2 August the company found a further problem with the vehicle and stood down without announcing a new date. Eight years in, RFA has destroyed one rocket and flown none.