SpaceX teams with EADS to pursue European rocket launch contracts

Space Exploration Technologies Corp. already counts the U.S. government as a key customer. Now it’s hoping to land rocket launch contracts with European governments.

The Hawthorne company, better known as SpaceX, announced Thursday that it would work with EADS Astrium to market launch services to an array of European space agencies through 2015. The deal is for Astrium to market SpaceX’s single-engine Falcon 1 rocket, which can lift small payloads into low-Earth orbit.

SpaceX says it can develop and launch rockets at a fraction of the cost of the current generation of spacecraft. It is hoping that Astrium, a subsidiary of the French-and-German-owned European Aeronautic Defense & Space Co., also the parent of Airbus, can sell that message overseas.

The Falcon 1 is SpaceX’s smaller rocket. The company’s larger, nine-engine booster, the Falcon 9, successfully made its maiden flight in June. SpaceX plans to blast it into space again this year with a cargo capsule, dubbed the Dragon, fixed atop.

NASA has already awarded SpaceX $1.6 billion in contracts for the Falcon 9 and Dragon to transport cargo to the International Space Station, starting as early as next year.

SpaceX hopes that the Dragon might one day carry astronauts into space after the space shuttle program is retired in 2011.

william.hennigan@latimes.com