ATMOS Space Cargo has closed a €25.7 million Series A round to develop reusable spacecraft that can carry cargo to orbit and bring it back to Earth. The company, co-founded by Sebastian Klaus, Marta Oliveira, and Jeffrey Hendrikse, builds what it calls orbital transfer and return vehicles, or OTRVs. Put simply, these are lightweight spacecraft designed to reach Low Earth Orbit, operate on their own for days or months, and then re-enter the atmosphere so that payloads can be recovered.
Europe currently has no independent, operational way to return payloads from orbit. The continent can launch satellites and cargo, but getting anything back has historically required American or Russian vehicles. That reliance is becoming harder to justify. The global space economy reached $626 billion in 2025, and demand for return services is growing as in-orbit manufacturing, microgravity research, and defense programs all expand. More than a dozen reentry companies hit significant milestones in 2025, according to Payload Space, much of it driven by defense research and the approaching retirement of the International Space Station in 2030. Europe's upstream space market share has meanwhile fallen to just 6% globally.
The round was co-led by Balnord and Expansion Ventures, with participation from Keen Defence and Security. The European Innovation Council joined through its Accelerator programme, combining grant and equity components. Additional investors include OTB Ventures, High-Tech Gründerfonds, APEX Ventures, Seraphim, Faber, E2MC, Kirch Ventures, Lennertz & Co., Mätch VC, MBG Baden-Württemberg, and Tech Horizons.
The space industry has made launches cheaper and more frequent over the past decade, but the return leg has not kept up. Most of what reaches orbit either stays there or burns up during re-entry. That is a problem for anyone who needs physical materials sent back, whether it is a pharmaceutical company running microgravity experiments or a defense agency retrieving sensitive hardware.
Europe feels the gap more than most. ESA's Space Rider programme, intended to give the continent its own reusable orbital vehicle, has faced repeated delays and is now targeting a first flight in 2028. Several European startups have entered the reentry race, but none offer routine return services yet. ATMOS completed its PHOENIX 1 demonstration flight in April 2025, becoming one of the first European companies to demonstrate orbital re-entry with a privately built vehicle.
"ATMOS is building a capability Europe critically lacks: a sovereign, repeatable ability to return payloads from orbit. This investment supports the emergence of orbital return as essential infrastructure for Europe's commercial, institutional, and security needs." — Ted Elvhage, Founding Partner, Expansion Ventures.
The funding covers three priorities. The first is building and operating an initial fleet of three PHOENIX 2 vehicles. These will fly as a phased campaign, serving both institutional and commercial clients across different payload types and mission profiles. The idea is to move beyond one-off demonstrations and start delivering orbital return as a repeatable service.
Second, ATMOS is setting up a new entity called ATMOS WORKS, focused on European government and defense clients. The PHOENIX platform supports dual-use missions, meaning it can handle everything from in-orbit technology demonstrations to the secure return of sensitive equipment.
The third priority is PHOENIX 3. This next-generation vehicle is designed to carry approximately one metric tonne of payload, roughly ten times the capacity of PHOENIX 2. It is being developed to serve larger payload classes, multi-customer missions, and future security needs.
"Europe's strategic autonomy in space depends on sovereign, end-to-end access to orbit, including the ability to return. ATMOS Space Cargo is addressing an important capability gap in Europe's space infrastructure. This investment reflects the EIC Fund's commitment to supporting deep tech companies that strengthen European competitiveness, technological sovereignty, and the long-term development of the European space economy." — Svetoslava Georgieva, Chair of the EIC Fund Board, European Innovation Council.
ATMOS Space Cargo operates from Lichtenau, Germany, and Strasbourg, France, with more than 70 employees representing over 17 nationalities. CEO Sebastian Klaus holds an MSc in Aerospace Engineering with a focus on atmospheric re-entry and previously served in the German Armed Forces Special Forces. COO Marta Oliveira is an aerospace engineer who worked at NASA, ESA, and CNES, and was named to Forbes 30 Under 30 Europe in 2020. CTO Jeffrey Hendrikse brings over 24 years of experience in European space missions.
The company's core technology is something called an Inflatable Atmospheric Decelerator, or IAD. It works as both a heat shield and an aerodynamic brake during re-entry. Traditional heat shields are ablative, meaning they erode and lose material as they absorb heat. The ATMOS design is non-ablative. It sheds less material per flight, creates less debris, and provides greater precision when guiding the vehicle back to Earth.
Recovery operations for PHOENIX 2 are being prepared near Santa Maria in the Azores, under a Portuguese licence that allows commercial orbital re-entry within an EU member state's jurisdiction. The company has seven launches planned.
"This financing allows us to move to regular operational service. A structured campaign of three vehicles establishes Europe's first routine orbital return infrastructure. PHOENIX 2 is the first step to build a scalable European return infrastructure that will demonstrate our ability to access, operate, and return materials, data, and hardware from orbit independently. With ATMOS WORKS and PHOENIX 3, we are building the full architecture – commercial, institutional, and defence-capable – in parallel." — Sebastian Klaus, CEO and Co-Founder, ATMOS Space Cargo.
The €25.7 million round was co-led by Balnord, an early-stage investor focused on frontier and dual-use technologies in the Baltic Sea and Northern Europe, and Expansion Ventures, a pan-European venture capital firm focused on aerospace and defense. Keen Defence and Security also participated.
The European Innovation Council contributed through its Accelerator programme with blended grant and equity financing. Other investors in the round include OTB Ventures, High-Tech Gründerfonds, APEX Ventures, Seraphim, E2MC, Faber, Kirch Ventures, Lennertz & Co., Mätch VC, MBG Baden-Württemberg, and Tech Horizons.
"ATMOS is building exactly the kind of dual-use capability Europe needs more of: sovereign access not only to orbit, but back from orbit. We believe ATMOS can become a crucial part of the logistics backbone of a real European space industrial base — one built on operational services, strategic autonomy, and the ability to serve commercial, institutional, and defence customers from the same platform." — Aleksander Dobrzyniecki, General Partner, Balnord.
