Madrid’s Orbital Paradigm is taking a stripped-back approach to one of spaceflight’s most complex feats: bringing hardware safely through hypersonic reentry without the price tag that typically comes with it. The early-stage company believes that small, purpose-built capsules can undercut traditional return systems and unlock faster, more frequent trips for microgravity research and on-orbit manufacturing.
Why smaller, simpler capsules might win
The team’s thesis is straightforward: most customers don’t need a crew-rated spacecraft or a cargo hauler the size of a compact car. They need repeatable, affordable access to minutes or days in microgravity, followed by a dependable return. Orbital Paradigm’s answer is a minimalist capsule that flies light, accepts tight margins, and focuses on mission-essential functions.
Their first vehicle, a test article called KID, weighs roughly 25 kilograms and measures about 40 centimeters across. It carries no propulsion, no complex guidance system, and no expensive recovery campaign. The near-term goal is to separate from a launch vehicle, operate in space, survive peak heating, and transmit at least one “I made it” ping before impact. That’s intentionally austere, but it gathers the thermal and aerodynamic data needed to validate the design at a fraction of the usual cost.
This “minimum viable reentry” strategy trims cost in three high-burn areas: mass and complexity (no deorbit propulsion or precision landing), ground infrastructure (no dedicated recovery ships or aircraft on the first flight), and certification burden (demonstration-class risk posture rather than crew or cargo ratings). Smaller capsules also benefit from favorable aerodynamics: a low ballistic coefficient increases drag earlier, reducing peak heating loads compared with larger, denser bodies.
The first flights: test, learn, then recover
Orbital Paradigm has lined up three payloads for the maiden mission, including experiments from French space robotics startup Alatyr and Germany’s Leibniz University Hannover. The company says a third customer will be disclosed closer to launch. The flight will be arranged with an unnamed launch provider and mark the startup’s first on-orbit hardware demonstration.
Recovery isn’t the objective this time; data is. The capsule is designed to survive the harshest phase of reentry and confirm communications, providing real-world heating and loads to compare against simulations. That dataset feeds a follow-on campaign in which Orbital Paradigm will introduce propulsion and a parachute for controlled splashdown.
That second mission, targeting a guided descent toward the Azores, aligns with Portugal’s plan to develop a spaceport on Santa Maria through its national space agency. While the initial iteration focuses on a short microgravity window rather than prolonged orbital stays, the addition of recovery enables customers to iterate rapidly on materials, biotech, and components—a capability repeatedly highlighted by the ISS National Lab and European research programs as essential to maturing space-enabled products.
A crowded field raising the reentry bar
The company enters a competitive transatlantic race. In the United States, Varda Space Industries executed a commercial capsule reentry and landing after securing a reentry license from the Federal Aviation Administration, demonstrating a complete end-to-end flow from orbit to ground. In Europe, The Exploration Company performed a controlled reentry of a test vehicle, advancing a modular platform for future services. Inversion Space and others are also pursuing rapid-return containers sized for logistics, defense, and research.
Where Orbital Paradigm differentiates is cost discipline and cadence. By avoiding the mass and operational footprint of large capsules, the team is aiming at a price point that supports multiple flights per year for a single customer—a pattern common in biotech and advanced materials, where protocols demand frequent, repeatable runs. Industry roadmaps from agencies like ESA point to microgravity-enabled processes (crystal growth, fiber optics, organoids) that depend on iterative testing rather than single-shot missions.
Europe’s lean path versus U.S. tailwinds
Orbital Paradigm has raised approximately €1.5 million in seed capital from investors including Id4, Demium, Pinama, Evercurious, and Akka. That’s modest by aerospace standards. U.S. peers often augment venture rounds with nondilutive government contracts—through programs like SBIR and defense hypersonics initiatives—that can add tens of millions in R&D. European startups typically rely more on private capital and selective national or ESA grants, promoting tighter engineering cycles and earlier commercial focus.
Lean funding can be a forcing function. Building to sell from day one shapes the product toward pragmatic requirements: sufficient thermal protection rather than bespoke tiles, simple avionics over redundancy-heavy architectures, and flight test sequences that prioritize measurable risk retirement. It is a different tempo than flagship capsules, but one increasingly aligned with the needs of microgravity users.
What success would mean for orbital return
If the KID flight validates the models, Orbital Paradigm’s next steps—adding deorbit capability and recovery while staying small—could lower the barrier to frequent return from orbit. Think of it as an airfreight envelope for space: compact, standardized, and optimized for speed rather than bulk.
For researchers and startups, that could translate into faster design cycles and clearer unit economics. Rather than booking rare slots on large vehicles, customers could schedule multiple experiments per year, controlling for variables and advancing from proof-of-concept to product qualification. Space agencies and university partners would gain a complementary platform to the ISS and future commercial stations, particularly for short-duration trials.
Reentry will always be unforgiving physics. But by narrowing the mission to what many users actually need—and proving it with a deliberately spartan first flight—Orbital Paradigm aims to show that affordable, repeatable orbital return is less a moonshot than a matter of right-sizing the problem.