SIRIUS SPACE SERVICES AND TUMBLEWEED PARTNER TO PAVE THE WAY FOR FUTURE SUBORBITAL AND ORBITAL LAUNCHES
Nanterre, France – September 29, 2026 – SIRIUS Space Services and Tumbleweed have signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to partner on the execution of Tumbleweed’s future microgravity missions with SIRIUS orbital launch services
As a first step, the two companies will assess Tumbleweed missions’ compatibility and objectives, payloads, experiments and technologies with the suborbital S1B (Balistic) suborbital test vehicle. The vehicle is designed to validate key launcher technologies under real flight conditions and provide access to a microgravity environment. The assessment will cover payload interfaces, operational constraints and expected microgravity conditions.
The cooperation will also extend to orbital missions using the SIRIUS launcher family, with discussions covering mission concepts, requirements, timelines, and technical and operational considerations.
“This agreement reflects the role we want SIRIUS to play for emerging European space companies: providing a pathway from early suborbital missions and microgravity testing to access to orbit. With Tumbleweed, we now want to identify concrete missions and move toward future launch services,” said Antoine Fourcade, CEO, SIRIUS Space Services
“This mission will be a great opportunity for scientists to fly microgravity payloads easily and quickly thanks to our Pod system. Following on from S1B, Sirius’s launch vehicles could be a great match for our service delivering rapid, repeated and straightforward access to the space environment.” said Guillaume Brault, CTO, Tumbleweed
About SIRIUS Space Services
Founded in 2020, SIRIUS Space Services develops launch solutions dedicated to small satellites, with the ambition of making access to space more sustainable and strengthening European sovereignty through competitive launch services.
Its family of reusable launch vehicles — SIRIUS-1, SIRIUS-13 and SIRIUS-15 — is designed to deploy satellites weighing up to 1,100 kg into a 600-km Sun-Synchronous Low Earth Orbit (SSO).
SIRIUS Space Services is a two-time winner of the French France 2030 “Mini and Micro Launchers” call for projects.
About Tumbleweed
Tumbleweed makes access to space as easy as mailing a package. The company sells microgravity to researchers, manufacturers and R&D teams through Pod, a modular payload container that handles power, data and certification, and Oasis, the free-flying orbital platform that hosts Pods and returns them to Earth. Founded in 2024 and now counting a team of 20+ experts across Vienna and Delft, Tumbleweed leverages rapid hardware development and transparent pricing to get commercial partners from idea to space faster than ever before.
Source: SIRIUS Space Services
