Unastella: South Korea's Rocket Startup Raising $24M to Compete in the Global Launch Market
As global giants like SpaceX eye expansion, Asian startups are stepping up. Unastella, a four-year-old South Korean rocket company, just secured $24 million to develop its UNA EXPRESS series.
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As the space race intensifies and companies like SpaceX prepare for their largest Initial Public Offering (IPO) ever, aspiring players from across Asia are gearing up. One such rising star is Unastella, a four-year-old South Korean rocket startup that has just closed a $24 million Series B funding round, bringing its total to $44 million.
Unastella made history last year by launching the UNA EXPRESS-I from home soil in May 2025. The Seoul-based company is dedicated to developing its own launch vehicles and engines, initially focusing on small satellite launches. Founder and CEO Jae Park sees this as a stepping stone toward more ambitious goals, including crewed suborbital flights.
The UNA EXPRESS-I uses a kerosene and liquid oxygen propulsion system, a reliable choice also used by SpaceX’s Falcon series. Unastella has innovated with an electric motor pump in place of the traditional turbo pump, offering a cheaper alternative that Rocket Lab has already validated. However, this change comes at the cost of payload capacity.
“We’re not just about building the most impressive rocket; we’re aiming to get to market quickly,” Park stated. He emphasized that Unastella handles everything in-house, from design and manufacturing to ground operations and flight data management. The company’s first end-to-end system test came with the UNA EXPRESS-I launch.
Before founding Unastella, Park spent his career working on rocket engines. His background includes roles at Korea’s Nuri rocket project and the German Aerospace Center in Berlin. The company's next big step is launching the UNA EXPRESS-II by 2026, targeting a significant milestone of reaching 100 kilometers, which could open doors to partnerships with South Korea’s aerospace and defense firms.
Unastella isn’t alone; other players like Innospace and Perigee Aerospace are also vying for a piece of the global space launch market worth over $41 billion by 2030. Meanwhile, governments around Asia are investing heavily in their own space sectors, with South Korea’s KASA committing $266 million to support private sector growth.
