T-Minus Engineering

T-Minus Engineering B.V. was founded in 2011 in Delft, the Netherlands, by four TU Delft Space Engineering graduates (Roel Eerkens, Mark Uitendaal, Hein Olthof, Eric Smit). The company designs, builds, and launches solid-propellant suborbital sounding rockets and hypersonic test vehicles for scientific, commercial, and defense/national-security customers, following a "We Design - We Build - We Launch" philosophy that covers rocket propulsion, flight electronics, structural/aerodynamic design, and launch operations in-house.

T-Minus operates its own AP-composite solid propellant manufacturing facility alongside mechanical and electrical engineering workshops, giving it end-to-end control over its sounding rocket and hypersonic test vehicle programs. Its flagship DART sounding rocket reaches the hard-to-access 50-120km "ignorosphere" band, while its CanSat Launcher supports educational and technology-demonstration payloads.

The company partners with government and commercial launch range operators including the European Space Agency, the Dutch Ministry of Defence, Maritime Launch Services (Nova Scotia, Canada), and Southern Launch (Australia), positioning itself as a European alternative for low-cost, rapid-turnaround suborbital access.