A joint European–Russian company established in 1996 to market commercial launches of Soyuz spacecraft. Starsem oversees the marketing and management of commercial launch services, including mission preparations at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, payload deployment, and satellite tracking. Its headquarters are in Paris, France.

The company launched the European Space Agency's (ESA's) Mars Express probe on 2 June 2003 and Venus Express in 2011, among others. By December 2017 it had also successfully launched its 14th Soyuz family mission and the 1 881st flight of a Soyuz launch vehicle.

Starsem is composed of four space organizations: the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Company (EADS), Arianespace, the Russian space agency Rosaviakosmos, and the Samara Space Centre in Russia.