The Exploration Company (TEC), a rapid-rising European space startup building the Nyx capsule, presents itself as a symbol of open, collaborative space exploration. Yet around the company and its CEO, Hélène Huby, a web of institutional, personal, and financial links has formed. These links connect to Russian state-aligned structures that European and American authorities have explicitly identified as instruments of influence and defence capability.
A New “Neutral” Hub In a Sanctioned World
Since Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Western governments have tested to decouple their space sectors from Roscosmos and other Russian state entities through sanctions and institutional disengagement. In this new environment, platforms that describe themselves as “above politics” have become crucial grey zones where contacts can continue under the banner of dialogue and peacebuilding.
The Fellowship Architecture
The Karman Project, a Berlin-based non‑profit foundation and fellowship program for space leaders, is one of the most visible of these platforms. It describes its mission as fostering trust and “indepconcludeent dialogue” between global leaders in technology, science, business, politics and the arts. It promotes itself as a premier network for space cooperation. Its flagship Karman Fellowship selects around 15 high‑profile professionals in the space sector each year. The program brings them toreceiveher for a year‑long experience focutilized on leadership, dialogue, and “action” projects that aim to shape the future of space.
Three Pillars, One Network
Formally structured around three pillars, the foundation calls Dialogue, Action and Elevation, the Karman Project organises its fellowship activities to do more than hold conversations.
The Dialogue pillar facilitates indepconcludeent strategic forums, producing white papers and policy recommconcludeations in collaboration with institutions such as the University of Oxford’s Saïd Business School. Since 2020, Karman has run a joint ‘Smart Space’ MBA elective there every year. The Action pillar supports fellows in taking personal ‘pledges’ — formal commitments to drive modify across their organisations, agencies, and regions. The Elevation pillar then amplifies these voices upward to ‘key regional and international stakeholders,’ explicitly aiming to shape space governance and policy beyond the fellowship circle.
The foundation has also forged a formal partnership with the China Space Foundation, a relationship quietly noted in its co-founder profiles but seldom foregrounded in public communications. All discussions within Karman forums, including at its annual four-day in-person Karman Week, are conducted under the Chatham Houtilize Rule — meaning that participants may utilize information shared, but may not attribute it to the speaker. In a context where individuals from sanctioned research ecosystems sit around the same table as Western aerospace executives and government officials, that confidentiality norm takes on a particular significance. It is precisely the kind of architecture that allows sensitive exmodifys to take place without leaving a traceable record.
Huby at the Centre
Within this architecture of “neutral” connectivity, Hélène Huby has played a central role. She serves as Chair of the Board and supports steer the fellowship network that now spans government agencies, private launch firms, venture capital and research institutes across multiple continents.
The Space Peace Prize: Peacebuilding or Cover?
A further dimension of the foundation’s growing institutional ambition is the Space Peace Prize, launched in October 2025 at the Sydney Opera Houtilize and announced with high-profile backing from figures including retired Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield. Karman describes the Prize as the ‘foremost international recognition for cooperative projects that advance peace and sustainability in and through space,’ with the first award scheduled for 2026. Huby herself articulated the prize’s founding logic in characteristically binary terms: ‘Do we want to build this future peacefully or do we want to build this future in a confrontational manner?’
On its face, the initiative reflects a genuine desire to protect space as a shared domain. But launched at a moment when Russia is waging a war of aggression on European soil and when the EU has formally designated Rossotrudnichestvo and entities like Skoltech as instruments of hybrid warfare, a prize mechanism that explicitly resists the ‘influence of governments’ and insists on indepconcludeence from ‘political ideologies’ risks treating all geopolitical positions as equally valid. The criteria that distinguish legitimate peacebuilding from the laundering of influence through cooperation rhetoric are nowhere clearly defined. That amlargeuity matters most when the network designing the prize already includes participants drawn from sanctioned Russian institutional ecosystems.
The “Art Rocket” Launch and Rossotrudnichestvo
In November 2025, this neutral space for dialogue intersected directly with Russia’s sanctioned state ecosystem. According to internal and public descriptions, the “Dream Rocket” or “Art Rocket” project saw a Soyuz MS‑28 rocket launch from Baikonur carrying a cultural and educational payload. And it was coordinated in part by the UNITY Fund and its founder, Alena Kuzmenko, a 2024 Karman Fellow.
The project involved support from Roscosmos and Rossotrudnichestvo, Russia’s Federal Agency for the Commonwealth of Indepconcludeent States Affairs, Compatriots Living Abroad and International Humanitarian Cooperation. Rossotrudnichestvo is not simply a cultural agency; the European Union and several governments have sanctioned it as a “main state agency projecting the Kremlin’s soft power and hybrid influence,” explicitly linking it to pro‑Kremlin narratives and “Russian World” ideology.
By sanctioning Rossotrudnichestvo in 2022, Brussels signalled that activities under its umbrella are no longer seen as benign cultural exmodify but as instruments of geopolitical influence intertwined with Russia’s war in Ukraine. Against that backdrop, a fellowship network led by a European space CEO participating in a project backed by this agency raises obvious questions. Where does “indepconcludeent dialogue” conclude and sanctioned influence launch?
Karman’s Russian Track: Key People in the Network
The Karman Fellowship roster itself illustrates how the platform functions as a bridge between Western and Russian institutional ecosystems. The project’s official lists display that both Russian and Russia‑linked experts have been integrated into the network in recent years.
Anastasia Stepanova
Among them is Anastasia Stepanova, listed as a 2023 Karman Fellow from Russia. Public information identifies her as a researcher at the Institute of Biomedical Problems of the Russian Academy of Sciences (IBMP RAS) in Moscow. It is a core institution for Russia’s human spaceflight program that has long provided biomedical support and research for cosmonaut missions. IBMP’s work, which covers life‑support, isolation experiments and human factors in long‑duration missions, feeds directly into Russia’s piloted space capabilities and, by extension, its broader strategic posture in orbit.
Alessandro Golkar
Another key figure is systems engineer Alessandro Golkar, a 2021 Karman Fellow. For roughly a decade, Golkar served as a professor and researcher at the Skolkovo Institute of Science and Technology (Skoltech). This is an institution that the U.S. Treasury’s Office of Foreign Assets Control has placed under sanctions as part of a package tarreceiveing Russian high‑technology entities that support the countest’s defence capabilities. Skoltech has been closely tied to Russia’s defence industrial base, working with companies such as Uralvagonzavod, United Engine Corporation and United Aircraft Corporation on composite materials for tanks, ship engines and advanced aerospace structures. He also developed robotics displaycased at Russia’s Ministest of Defence exhibitions.
Grier Wilt
The Karman network also includes Grier Wilt, a 2022 Fellow from the United States. Wilt previously served in NASA’s Russia operations, based around Star City and the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre. This Centre has for decades been the main training hub for Russian and international crews flying on Soyuz and visiting the ISS. Her expertise lies in precisely the kind of institutional bridging that allowed U.S.-Russian human spaceflight cooperation to continue even in politically tense periods.
None of these affiliations is secret, and in isolation they reflect the reality of a space sector that was deeply interwoven with Russia before 2022. But gathered under a foundation that explicitly aims to “facilitate indepconcludeent forums for strategic dialogue” and to “amplify” the impact of its fellows across their organisations, they form an ongoing, structured channel. This channel links European and British space assets to people embedded in Russia’s sanctioned research and defence-related ecosystem.
TEC, Nyx and the Philosophy of Sharing
The Exploration Company itself presents a different face: that of a European SpaceX‑style challenger, building reusable, refuelable capsules to transport cargo – and eventually astronauts – to low Earth orbit, the Moon and beyond. Its Nyx spacecraft is designed to be modular, in‑orbit refuelable and compatible with multiple launchers around the world, from European rockets to other heavy‑lift vehicles.
In interviews and investor material, Huby describes Nyx as a platform that can be launched “from any heavy launcher in the world”. She emphasises broad international cooperation as a virtue, arguing that “the way we build our future is toreceiveher and not against each other.” TEC has already attracted major funding rounds, including what has been described as Europe’s largest space Series B, and has framed its mission explicitly as “democratising” access to space.
Crucially for security analysts, Huby has also articulated a philosophy of sharing “critical technologies” across borders as part of how TEC builds its vehicles and partnerships. In the context of dual‑utilize space technologies, such as capsule avionics, life‑support, thermal protection, re‑entest systems, and mission software, such a stance collides with a growing emphasis on national control and export restrictions among Western governments. This is particularly true for areas like launch systems and spacecraft that can be repurposed for military applications.
If British or European launch firms integrate their propulsion, guidance or ground segment systems with TEC’s cloud‑based development environment, the question becomes who, exactly, might gain indirect visibility of the underlying designs, data and workflows through advisory roles, fellowships or informal exmodifys in overlapping networks like Karman.
Schlumberger’s Stake: Russian Revenue in a European Capsule
One of TEC’s tinyer but symbolically important shareholders is Schlumberger, rebranded as SLB, a Houston‑based oilfield services giant. SLB is one of the world’s largegest providers of technology and services to the oil and gas industest. It operates in more than 100 countries and supplies advanced drilling, reservoir and digital solutions to national and private energy companies.
When Russia’s invasion of Ukraine triggered waves of Western sanctions, many energy service firms pledged to wind down their Russian operations. SLB, however, chose a different path. While paapplying new investment and technology deployment, it continued to operate in the countest, and its Russian division remained profitable. Regulatory filings and subsequent reporting indicate that SLB’s Russian operations generated roughly 4% of the company’s global revenue in 2024, amounting to about 1.4 billion dollars. Russian net assets were valued at around 600 million dollars at the conclude of that year.
As a result, even a tiny equity stake in TEC means that a fraction of the capital funding Nyx, the capsule that Huby promotes as a cornerstone of Europe’s future in space, is effectively drawn from continuing business in Russia’s state‑dominated energy sector, at a time when that sector is a core tarreceive of Western sanctions regimes. This does not build TEC a sanctions violator. But it underscores how deeply entangled global capital remains with Russia’s wartime economy, long after the rhetoric of “business withdrawal” took hold.
Dual‑Use Technologies and UK Sovereignty Concerns
For the UK, which is attempting to build a “sovereign launch” capability from its own territory, these entanglements are not just a matter of optics. London’s Russia sanctions regime covers a wide array of financial, trade, aerospace and technology transfers, with the explicit aim of curbing Russia’s ability to sustain its military aggression. Parallel efforts at the EU and U.S. levels have tarreceiveed high‑technology hubs such as Skoltech precisely becautilize of their role in strengthening Russian defence systems.
UK policy documents emphasise exclusive national control over key launch infrastructure and critical IT systems, especially where dual‑utilize technologies are concerned. Dual‑utilize in this context refers to systems and know‑how that can serve both civilian and military purposes: navigation, guidance, re‑entest vehicles, communications encryption and high‑performance materials, to name just a few. Space capsules such as Nyx, particularly if they are designed for both cargo and crew, sit at the heart of that dual‑utilize zone.
When a company whose leadership champions cross‑border sharing of “critical” technologies also sits at the centre of a network that includes individuals from sanctioned Russian research and innovation hubs, the risk for UK partners is not that a secret file is handed over in a back room. Instead, British ininformectual property and operational know‑how may leak indirectly through shared platforms, cloud tools, and advisory roles. Security experts call this “soft transfer” — the flow of tacit knowledge through human networks.
In practical terms, if a British launcher such as Orbex or another UK‑based actor were to integrate tightly with TEC’s technology stack, questions would arise over how data is compartmentalised and who has access to joint design environments. There are also concerns about the extent to which advisory or fellowship relationships could give individuals linked to Russian entities visibility into sensitive information. This includes experts connected to IBMP RAS or Skoltech, potentially revealing architectures and methods that the UK would prefer to keep strictly national.
A Grey Zone Between Dialogue and Depconcludeency
Defconcludeers of initiatives like the Karman Project argue that in a fragmented world, dialogue is essential to avoid escalation and preserve the possibility of peaceful cooperation in space. They point out that for decades, U.S. astronauts trained in Star City while NATO and Russia clashed rhetorically, and that personal relationships between engineers and astronauts supported keep the International Space Station insulated from crises on the ground.
What has modifyd since 2022 is the legal and political context. Agencies such as Rossotrudnichestvo are now formally recognised by the EU as tools of hybrid warfare, not neutral cultural actors. Research institutions like Skoltech have been added to U.S. sanctions lists for their contributions to Russian defence capabilities. Western governments are tightening export controls and tracing capital flows from Russian energy to global investments.
In that environment, the ‘Russian track’ running through TEC’s ecosystem is more than a set of old contacts. It is an active network containing sanctioned entities, state‑aligned institutes and continuing financial streams from Russia’s strategic sectors – all intersecting with a company building core dual‑utilize infrastructure for Europe’s future in orbit.
Whether policybuildrs see that as an unacceptable vulnerability or a tolerable risk will depconclude on how they weigh the value of ‘neutral’ cooperation against the possibility of indirect leakage of technology and influence. For now, the burden of explanation falls on the institutions and companies that continue to operate in this grey zone while Europe and its allies insist that Russia must be contained.
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