The Exploration Company

What is the mission?

The Exploration Company develops, manufactures and operates spaceships to serve the logistical needs of space stations and space exploration. With a focus on reusable and refillable spacecraft, it aims to make space exploration affordable, modular and sustainable.

Who are the founders?

The Exploration Company founder and CEO Hélène Huby has more than a decade of experience working on space technologies for prime contractors like Airbus and ArianeGroup, leading the work behind Orion’s European Service Module, combined with a level of courage, grit and drive of an entrepreneur that is rare even by traditional tech standards.

Since launching the company in 2021, she’s built one of most impressive and accomplished teams in the industry with proven executives tired of the status quo.

Why did Khaled get involved?

The Exploration Company is a company that I believe is sitting on the kind of tinder box that you don’t see often as an investor. It’s operating in a huge market where demand for launches dramatically outstrips supply, in a region which has received decades-worth of institutional investment, in a political climate where policy-makers know they need to take urgent action if they want to safeguard our critical assets.

When you add in a founder who you believe can emulate the kind of value creation we’ve seen in commercialising space in the US, you have a near-perfect set of ingredients for success. TEC will have one of the safest docking technologies worldwide, as it will be certified by NASA, which in turn will provide Europe with the first brick enabling the inspection of its sovereign satellites in space and also protect them on site. Moreover, with its reusable capsule & in house technologies such as thermal protection, TEC will not only allow Europe to test on a regular basis re-entry hypersonic technologies (such as aircrafts & ballistic) but also unlock a raft of other opportunities beyond sovereignty and defence.