PLD Space was founded in 2011 by Raúl Torres, Raúl Verdú and José E. Martínez in
Elche, Spain, and as of 2019 it employed 70 people. In August 2017 the company headquarter moved to new facilities in the Elche Industrial Park, where the assembly facilities for Miura 1 are located. Since 2014, the company has operated an engine test stand located at
Teruel Airport, where they performed the first test of its liquid fuel engine on . It was the first time a liquid rocket engine was tested in Spain, and the first time a private company in Europe tested a liquid rocket engine on its own facilities. As of 2018, PLD Space had plans to expand their test facilities to include a vertical test stand to qualify the complete Miura 1 suborbital rocket. In early August 2018, PLD Space and the
Teruel Airport Consortium signed the concession of a space at the airport for the PLD Space to test launcher technology. The agreement has a period of 25 years, with the option of an additional 10-year extension. PLD Space will invest in infrastructure for the construction of a new control room, offices, access paths, a rocket engine maintenance hangar and a new test bench to test the complete Miura 1 rocket. In November 2018 PLD Reached an agreement with
INTA () to launch
Miura 1 from
El Arenosillo. The agreement is not limited to using the INTA facilities for launching but rather establishing a lasting relationship that will allow them to develop scientific, aerospace and technical knowledge. In July 2019, PLD Space reached an agreement with
CNES to study the launch of
Miura 5 from
CSG,
French Guiana. As part of their agreement, INTA is also helping them procure a launch site, being
El Hierro Launch Centre the best option from a technical point of view. As of March 2023, the company planned to launch their first
Miura 1 vehicle in the second quarter of 2023 from
El Arenosillo Test Centre. The launch successfully occurred on at 0:19 UTC.
Funding The company has been funded through a series of investment rounds from both institutional and private sources, raising a total of by . By 2013, the company, had gathered investments worth approximately . In 2013 they closed a investment round, including a seed contract with the Spanish Government through the
Centre for the Development of Industrial Technology (CDTI). In December 2015, PLD Space secured its first commercial contract as one of the partners in the Small Innovative Launcher for Europe (SMILE) program with the European Commission and the
German Aerospace Center (DLR). The company contracted to test liquid propulsion engines for the DLR at its propulsion test facilities in the airport of Teruel. In April 2016, PLD Space secured a further from Spain's
TEPREL reusable launcher engine program.
TEPREL (Acronym for Spanish Reusable Propulsion Technologies for Launchers) will help PLD Space to continue their liquid rocket engine program,\ the first one in Spain dedicated to boost the small satellite industry in Europe. This project will help PLD Space to develop a rocket engine qualified for flight. In October 2016, The
European Space Agency (ESA) selected PLD Space as the prime contractor for the "Liquid Propulsion Stage Recovery" project (LPSR) as part of the agency's
Future Launchers Preparatory Programme (FLPP). The goal of this project is to study a strategy to recover the first stage of a launcher, making it partially reusable, with a prospected funding of . In a second investment round, closed in January 2017, the company secured , of that contributed by
GMV. GMV also took the role to develop the complete avionics of
Miura 1 and
Miura 5, including guidance, navigation and control (GNC), telemetry and onboard software for both launchers. PLD Space received further in January 2018 through the European Commissions Medium-sized Enterprises (SME) Instrument Phase 2, as part of the European Union's Horizon 2020 program for research and innovation, a grant to support to the development of a pair of launchers designed for small satellites. In February 2018 PLD Space was one of the five companies chosen by ESA to perform a feasibility study proposing an economically viable, commercially self-sustaining microlauncher. For this, the company received a funding of . In September 2020, PLD Space secured Series B funding from Arcano partners. == Vehicles ==