[10] At the ESA Ministerial Council held in Seville in November 2019, the development of the Space Rider was subscribed by the participating member states with an allocation of €195.73 million.

[4] In April 2018, ESA released an Announcement of Opportunity (AoO) to fly small payloads on Space Rider's maiden flight.

[1] On completion of the two-month long maiden mission, Space Rider will return to Earth with the payloads stowed in its cargo bay.

[17] This qualification flight of Space Rider will take place in 2025[4] followed by several missions to demonstrate a range of capabilities and orbits, before handing over the project to the private sector.

[20] The Space Rider design inherits technology developed for the earlier Intermediate eXperimental Vehicle, also within the Programme for Reusable In-orbit Demonstrator in Europe (PRIDE).

[9] It was then decided in 2017 that the design should optimise the internal volume of the Vega rocket fairing, so its aerodynamic shape will be a simple lifting body, as tested on its predecessor, the IXV.

[3][21] The re-entry module itself is a testbed for entry technologies as the IXV precursor was, so future improvements are envisioned,[22] including point-to-point flights, even "space tourism".

[7] Upon atmospheric entry, the lifting body shape will decelerate the spacecraft to subsonic speed (below Mach 0.8), when one or two drogue parachute will be deployed at about 15–12 km altitude to slow it further (to Mach 0.18 - 0.22)[21] Then, a controllable gliding parachute called parafoil will be deployed to begin the controlled descent phase for a nearly horizontal touchdown (≈35 m/s) using no wheels.