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Exolaunch books its first Starfall mission on a Starship flight targeted for 2029

German integrator Exolaunch has signed with SpaceX to fill a Starfall reentry capsule with customer payloads on a Starship mission launching no earlier than 2029 — its first Earth-return commitment and its first Starship booking.

By Sarah Whitfield · · Updated · 1 min read

A SpaceX Starship booster descending to the launch tower for a chopsticks catch at sunset, engines flaring.
Photo: Steve Jurvetson (CC BY 2.0), via Wikimedia Commons · source

German launch integrator Exolaunch has signed an agreement with SpaceX to support customer payloads on a Starfall reentry mission launching on Starship no earlier than 2029, Payload Space reported on Monday. The deal is Exolaunch’s first commitment to an Earth-return mission and its first booking on Starship.

Under the agreement, Exolaunch will act as payload integrator, filling the capsule’s roughly 1,000-kilogram return capacity with experiments and manufacturing payloads from biotech, pharmaceutical, in-space manufacturing, advanced-materials, government and research customers, NASASpaceFlight reported. The company will manage the technical, logistical, operational and regulatory requirements, and is considering building or acquiring new hardware to support payloads inside the vehicle, chief marketing officer Jeanne Allarie told Payload.

Exolaunch is being acquired by investment firm EQT, with the deal expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2026. “[EQT has] a very broad portfolio of biotech companies, so we have a very streamlined access to these kinds of customers,” Allarie said.

Starfall is SpaceX’s disk-shaped cargo reentry capsule, first flown on a Falcon 9 demonstration from Cape Canaveral on 23 June 2026. Exolaunch is not alone: Luxembourg-based Space Cargo Unlimited announced on 15 September it had booked all 1,000 kg of a Starfall flight targeted for 2028 for a one-tonne “space factory” using its BentoBox platform, with a third of the mission sold; Redwire’s SpaceMD unit also plans to fly 32 PIL-BOX variants on Starfall in 2028. Neither date is an official SpaceX manifest commitment, and both depend on Starship reaching operational commercial flights.

Sources

More on this topic: all Satellite Internet stories

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