Space Cargo Unlimited Ties Its Factory to a 22-Second Plane

Space Cargo Unlimited has taken a stake in Novespace, the CNES-backed operator of Europe’s Airbus A310 Zero-G. The companies did not publish a price or a percentage. Nicolas Gaume, co-founder and chief executive of Space Cargo, will join the Novespace board.

The Luxembourg firm sells an orbital factory module called BentoBox, and its own website still dates the first ATMOS Phoenix flights to 2027. Novespace’s converted Airbus already flies several science campaigns a year from Bordeaux-Mérignac, and each dive produces 22 seconds of weightlessness.

Space Cargo Unlimited Buys Into France’s Zero-G Operator

On 31 August, Space Cargo Unlimited said it had become a shareholder of Novespace alongside CNES, France’s national space agency. Gaume will sit on the Novespace board as the two firms try to sell a single path from short airplane tests to later manufacturing in orbit.

Space Cargo was founded in 2014 by Gaume and Emmanuel Etcheparre. It keeps its headquarters in Luxembourg and its main operational base in Bordeaux, a few kilometres from the A310’s hangar at Mérignac airport. Novespace, created by CNES on 8 July 1986, has run parabolic science flights since 1988 and now owns the largest such aircraft in the world.

Gaume said Europe already has the science and the engineering, and that the gap is access. “By investing in Novespace, we’re strengthening that journey from early microgravity research through to future commercial manufacturing in orbit,” he said.

Neither side published the cheque, the share, or any condition on CNES’s control. The notice reads as a completed holding, not a letter of intent, and it arrived without a public blast from the companies’ own accounts.

WHAT WE KNOW

• The holding: Space Cargo is now a Novespace shareholder and Gaume takes a board seat.
• The plane: Novespace owns and flies the Airbus A310 Zero-G from Bordeaux-Mérignac.
• The pitch: parabolic tests sit in front of BentoBox flights that still have no public launch date this year.

WHAT IS UNCONFIRMED

• The price: no figure was released for the stake or for any follow-on cash.
• The share: CNES remains described as majority owner, and Space Cargo’s percentage was not given.

That silence is the deal’s first hard fact. A board seat is public. The rest of the cap table is not.

Twenty-Two Seconds Still Decide What Reaches Orbit

A parabolic flight is a converted airliner flown in a bell-shaped dive. For a short window at the top of each manoeuvre the plane and everything in it are in free fall, which is why researchers use it to test hardware, fluids, biology and medical gear before anyone pays for a rocket.

CNES lists 22 seconds of weightlessness on each parabola, a three-hour sortie, 31 parabolas on a science flight, and 100 m² of cabin for experiments. Public discovery flights under the AirZeroG brand, launched in 2013, fly 15 parabolas instead of the full science set.

A310 ZERO-G FLIGHT FIGURES

• Weightless window: 22 seconds on each parabola, flown at about 8,500 metres.
• Science profile: 31 parabolas on a standard research flight lasting about three hours.
• Cabin: 100 m² of stripped, padded floor for racks and people.
• Public profile: 15 parabolas on AirZeroG discovery flights.

Novespace bought the A310 in June 2014, a former German government jet once named Konrad Adenauer, and flew its first science campaign on 5 May 2015 after the older A300 reached the end of its life. Sabena Technics maintains the airframe. CNES and ESA have carried the heavy upkeep bills that a 10-to-50-person flight company could not easily float alone.

The 70th CNES campaign, flown in March 2026, ran 93 parabolas over three days and stacked up about 30 minutes of weightlessness, with 10 to 15 experiments in the cabin. That is the product Space Cargo is now tied to: repeatable, cheap relative to orbit, and already on the calendar.

HOW LONG THE WEIGHTLESSNESS LASTS

A lab can fail a valve, a pump or a culture protocol in those 22 seconds and still fly again the next morning. An orbital slot that slips a year does not give that loop.

Who Owns Novespace After the New Stake?

Novespace is still presented as a CNES subsidiary, and AirZeroG’s own partner page states that CNES is the majority shareholder. That line predates Space Cargo’s entry and has not been replaced by a new breakdown.

The flight company was never a closed state shop. In 2018 Elevation Capital Partners, through its Inter Invest Gravity fund, paid 4 million euros for 36.53 percent of the capital previously held by a pool of French banks. Bpifrance was already on the register. Share capital on the company filing is 750,000 euros.

When Thomas Pesquet was named chief executive, Novespace’s 2023 sales were put at 13.2 million euros. The appointing shareholders were listed as CNES Participations, Elevation Capital Partners and Bpifrance. Space Cargo now walks into that mixed table, not into a blank state asset.

Thierry Gharib remains president of the board. Jean-François Clervoy, the ESA astronaut who helped start Europe’s parabolic programme, stays as honorary president and ambassador. Gaume’s seat is the new commercial voice in a room that already had public money, a private-equity block, and a famous pilot as boss.

Pesquet’s Brief Was Always New Customers

Pesquet became Novespace’s directeur général on 2 April 2025. He had worked there as an engineer and flight-ops lead before ESA selected him in 2009, then qualified on the A310 Zero-G in 2018 and kept flying it. CNES records 396 days in space and six spacewalks totalling 39 hours 54 minutes. He took an INSEAD MBA just before the appointment.

The job was sold, at the time, as a push to grow the company, not as a ceremonial title for a household astronaut. Lionel Suchet, then speaking for CNES, welcomed an arrival meant to speed Novespace’s development. Pesquet’s own line on the Space Cargo stake fits that brief almost word for word.

We are delighted to welcome SCU as a shareholder, helping us open the door to new markets and new customers.

Thomas Pesquet, CEO, Novespace

He also called parabolic flight a meeting of extreme aviation and space research, and said he would rather be on that team than anywhere else on the ground. The sentence that matters for the cap table is the one about customers. Agency campaigns still pay for most of the flying. The growth story needs labs and companies that do not wait for a CNES or ESA call.

Gharib has said about 10 percent of flights already carry ordinary passengers. That slice exists. It is not large enough to replace ESA, CNES and DLR. A shareholder that arrives with a list of orbital-factory clients is a different kind of fill.

Orbit Comes After the Airplane

BentoBox is Space Cargo’s modular, return-capable box for tests and making things in low Earth orbit. A December 2024 company note put payload capacity exceeding 100 kg on each uncrewed flight, with power, temperature control and a mix of pressurised and unpressurised cargo.

On 15 September 2025 the firm announced a 27.5 million euro Series A, led by Expansion Ventures with Eurazeo, the European Innovation Council, the European Investment Bank, Luxembourg Future Fund II and private backers through Tudigo. That round followed a 12.5 million euro EIC Accelerator package. Gaume used the money story to talk about hiring toward 30 people in Luxembourg and about the ISS being phased out by 2030.

The flight list around BentoBox is a stack of hosts, not a flying factory:

BENTOBOX HOSTS ON THE BOOKS

• ATMOS Phoenix: seven return missions on a free-flyer with an inflatable heat shield, recovery planned near Santa Maria in the Azores, first listed for a 2026 Falcon 9 rideshare and later dated 2027 on Space Cargo’s site.
• ESA Space Rider: a demonstration on Europe’s uncrewed spaceplane, listed for 2028.
• Dassault VORTEX: a November 2025 memorandum to put BentoBox on Dassault Aviation’s reusable orbital vehicle.
• ElevationSpace: a July 2026 memorandum with the Japanese return-tech firm to study integrating the box.
• REV1: Space Cargo’s own vehicle with Thales Alenia Space, aimed at more than 1 tonne of return cargo after 2028 and listed for 2029 on the company site.

ESA’s business applications listing still carries a seven-mission roadmap through 2028 and a first mission labelled Hop! 1. Mission WISE in 2019, which sent 320 grapevine samples to the ISS and brought them home, remains the firm’s completed commercial proof. The airplane in Mérignac is the piece of that ladder that already has flight hours.

CNES Campaigns Fill Only Part of the Year

Novespace’s science calendar is built around space agencies. CNES flies two campaigns a year, each of three flights, with about a dozen experiments per flight, selected and shepherded by CADMOS in Toulouse. ESA also flies two campaigns a year. DLR flies three campaigns every two years. AirZeroG says the company usually mounts 5 to 6 science campaigns a year, and has also flown NASA, JAXA and China’s CSU.

WHO ALREADY BUYS THE DIVES

• CNES: two three-flight campaigns a year, including student “Parabole post-bac” teams on the 69th campaign from 22 September to 3 October 2025.
• ESA and DLR: the other core European agency slots, sometimes shared on a joint campaign.
• NASA and JAXA: named international customers, including a NASA campaign flown in France in June 2023.
• AirZeroG passengers: a small public programme that funds, in part, the same airframe.

Those agency weeks do not use every day the A310 can fly. Pesquet’s “new markets” line only works if someone sells the empty ones to companies that want a cheap rehearsal before they buy a BentoBox slot. Space Cargo now has a reason to point its own customers at Mérignac first, and Novespace has a shareholder whose whole pitch depends on those customers not stalling at the airplane.

Gaume will take that board seat in the same airport where the A310 lives. The factory module is still a 2027 line on a website. The plane can be towed out this month.