A European consortium of four firms has formed to develop and market an autophage rocket engine, a propulsion system that burns its own fuselage as fuel. The collaboration, established simultaneously in Madrid, Paris, and Rome, targets a market opening created by SpaceX’s decision to stop accepting new small-satellite rideshare bookings after late 2028 for its Transporter and Bandwagon missions. With SpaceX’s launch manifest fully booked, no capacity exists for new small-satellite launches beyond 2028, a shortfall no current European launcher can address.
How Self-Consuming Engines Redefine Small Rocket Design
Traditional rockets carry fuel in tanks that become useless dead weight once empty, forcing the vehicle to carry unnecessary mass into orbit. For small rockets—those lifting just a few hundred kilograms—this inefficiency becomes prohibitive. Research from the University of Glasgow and Oles Honchar Dnipro National University demonstrated this issue in a 2018 study, showing that as rocket size shrinks, tank mass grows disproportionately compared to payload capacity. Below a certain threshold, conventional designs cannot reach orbit at all.
The autophage engine eliminates this problem by converting the rocket’s body into fuel. The fuselage consists of a polyethylene tube—identical to the plastic used in packaging, with liquid oxidizer sealed inside. Two pistons feed the tube into a combustion chamber, where a catalyst transforms the oxidizer into hot gas. This gas reacts with vaporized polyethylene, generating thrust while also producing the heat needed to melt the next section of the tube. As the rocket climbs, it consumes its own structure from the bottom up, much like a candle burning itself away. By the time orbit is reached, only the payload and engine remain.
This design removes tanks, casings, and plumbing, components that would otherwise become orbital debris. Unlike solid rockets, which burn a fixed propellant charge, or hybrid engines requiring separate fuel and oxidizer, the autophage system integrates both into a single consumable structure. The concept dates to a 1938 patent but remained theoretical until the 2018 Glasgow-Dnipro demonstration, which produced 100 newtons of thrust in controlled tests. A May 2025 static fire by Alpha Impulsion in France confirmed stable combustion at a larger scale, though still far below the 15-tonne thrust target for the Garnet engine, the alliance’s flagship project.
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The Garnet Engine Alliance: Roles and Progress
The partnership, named European Alliance 2030+, includes Alpha Impulsion (France), CT Ingénierie (France), Indra (Spain), and Mecano ID (France). Alpha Impulsion, founded in 2022, leads combustion research and operates a test facility in Naples through its Italian subsidiary. In January 2026, the company received formal recognition from the European Union when the European Commission’s Directorate-General for Defence Industry and Space awarded it a prize for its autophage propulsion work, highlighting its potential to reduce orbital debris, a growing regulatory concern for the EU.
CT Ingénierie oversees the Garnet engine’s preliminary design and systems engineering. Indra, Spain’s top aerospace contractor, contributes expertise in guidance, navigation, and control, adapting traditional launch systems to an engine where mass distribution shifts continuously. Mecano ID develops the autophage insertion systems, the mechanical components that regulate fuel tube feed rates and control thrust output.
Discussions are ongoing with potential Northern European partners for test equipment and launch infrastructure.
Filling SpaceX’s Rideshare Void
SpaceX’s SmallSat Rideshare Program has dominated the market with prices as low as $7,000 per kilogram, a rate no European launcher has matched. The final scheduled missions, Transporter-16 and Transporter-17, launched in March and July 2026, respectively. SpaceX has reportedly halted new bookings due to a fully booked Falcon 9 manifest. For operators planning launches after 2028, the cheapest alternatives, Rocket Lab’s Electron or Firefly’s Alpha, cost $15,000 to $25,000 per kilogram, nearly triple SpaceX’s rate. India’s PSLV offers competitive pricing but is not a European option.
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The alliance seeks to address the market gap by offering a domestic solution. The European Space Agency’s findings indicate that European nanosatellites have increasingly relied on foreign launchers, with European launchers capturing only a fraction of the global market. The EU’s emphasis on orbital debris mitigation provides regulatory support for innovative propulsion concepts.
Engineering hurdles remain significant. The May 2025 test by Alpha Impulsion was the largest autophage engine ever fired, but it produced thrust at a fraction of Garnet’s target. Scaling from 100 newtons to 15 tonnes, a substantial increase, requires solving issues like maintaining oxidizer seals in large fuel tubes and managing the forces needed to push the tube into a high-pressure combustion chamber. The four-company structure addresses these challenges through collaborative engineering efforts.
Garnet’s Market Position and Future Path
The Garnet engine differs from Alpha Impulsion’s Grenat rocket, a micro-launcher targeting a 2028 inaugural launch with a 1,000 kg payload capacity. While Grenat is a standalone vehicle, Garnet is designed as a licensable engine for future European micro-launchers. Separately, Alpha Impulsion is developing Opal, an autophage thruster for in-space applications like satellite station-keeping, expected to enter commercial service by 2028.
The near-term outlook for European satellite operators is straightforward: no viable domestic alternative exists to SpaceX’s rideshare. Rocket Lab’s Electron and Neutron, India’s PSLV, and European startups remain unproven at scale. The alliance’s announcement signals Europe’s commitment to autophage propulsion as a solution to the rideshare gap. Success depends on overcoming engineering challenges at scale and whether the market can endure until a viable option emerges. The first commercial launch remains years away, but the project’s progress marks a deliberate step toward reducing Europe’s reliance on foreign launch providers.