# European space industry

> Ten European space companies — Airbus Defence and Space, Arianespace, Thales Alenia Space, OHB, Avio, Surrey Satellite, ICEYE, ISAR Aerospace, The Exploration Company, PLD Space.

European space companies worth knowing | Euronomy

![space.webp](https://euronomy.eu/media/3vxfbvdv/space.webp)

Europe has had a serious independent space industry since the Ariane 1 launch in 1979 — and after a difficult decade competing with SpaceX, the sector is now genuinely reinventing itself. The traditional primes (Airbus Defence and Space, Arianespace, Thales Alenia Space) supply most of Europe's military, civil and scientific satellites and run the Ariane 6 / Vega launchers. Beneath them, a generation of private launchers (Isar Aerospace, RFA, PLD Space) and satellite manufacturers (Surrey, ICEYE, OHB) are pushing into the small-launch and constellation segments that SpaceX created.

The European space industry isn't trying to be SpaceX — it's trying to retain sovereign launch capability, build the Galileo and Copernicus civil-infrastructure programmes, and keep critical defence and intelligence satellite supply chains European. Those are different goals than commercial low-cost launch, and the metrics for success look different too.

Below: ten European space-industry companies covering primes, launchers, and the small-satellite next generation.