by The SaxaVord spaceport on the Isle of Shetland off the north coast of Scotland is the first licensed spaceport in Western Europe capable of vertically launching rockets.
SaxaVord, located on Unst, the northernmost island of the Shetland Islands, received a license from the United Kingdom’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) on Sunday, 17 December. Although no initial launch date has been announced yet, the CAA said in a statement that the license “paves the way for rocket launches on UK soil from 2024.”
SaxaVord, one of the two competitive shipping sites based in Scotland, has partnerships with a number of small developing companies satellite launchers including UK-based Skyrora, HyImpulse and German-headquartered Augsburg Rocket Company, and US aerospace giant Lockheed Martin.
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Skyrora, whose sub-real spirit is Skylark L rocket it failed during an initial test flight in Iceland in December 2022, welcome to the new announcement. In an emailed statement, the company said it has previously applied for a CAA license to operate its vehicles from the UK and was awaiting the outcome.
“Two other licenses must be granted to separate entities to launch fully within the regulations: the Range Operator License and the Launch License,” Skyrora head of government affairs Alan Thompson said in the statement. “Skyrora is currently assessing an application for a Live Launch License and we look forward to being granted a license in early 2024 to launch at SaxaVord in the summer.”
The Augsburg Rocket Company, too, expects to launch its first time orbital flight from SaxaVord next year, according to earlier reports i Space News. A firm compatriot of recent HyImpulse received £3.4 million from the UK Space Agency to fund testing of its hybrid propulsion rocket at the Shetland site and plans to launch a sub-orbital test rocket from Australia in early 2024.
SaxaVord is one of three UK launch sites aiming to become the leading space center in Europe. The Sutherland Spaceport, located on the north coast of Scotland about 260 miles (420 kilometers) southwest of SaxaVord, is still awaiting a license. But this site, located on the picturesque A’Mone peninsula, appears to be less attractive to rocket companies, having secured one key partnership – with UK-based Orbex, which is developing its main -a biofuel carrier in nearby Forres.
The UK has another licensed spaceport – Newquay in Cornwall – which hosted the failed launch attempt Orbit Maiden last year. Although the company is converted Boeing A 747 successfully took off from the Newquay runway in January 2023 with a micro-rocket Launcher One on board, that launcher failed shortly after being released from the carrier aircraft.
As Virgin Orbit has since filed for bankruptcy, there are currently no plans to fly a rocket from Cornwall, which can only support horizontal launches, meaning rockets are launched from the aircraft after being carried to high altitudes below.
SaxaVord could therefore offer a repeat of the UK’s first rocket flight. Despite the Virgin Orbit orbit, the UK government is not very excited about rocket flights, and recently published report on lessons learned describing the main problems that arose from the failure of the Virgin Orbit.
In a webinar accompanying the publication of the report, Colin MacLeod, head of UK spaceflight regulation at the CAA, said that nine rocket companies had filed license applications with the authority and were awaiting decisions, according to Space News.
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The SaxaVord license allows the spaceport to host up to 30 launches per year. The UK, which has a strong small satellite manufacturing industry, hopes that SaxaVord and their colleagues could take advantage of the convenience of launching a UK-made satellite from a UK port, possibly on a UK-made rocket. SaxaVord and their colleagues compared to customers. their foreign competitors.
“The granting of the SaxaVord spacecraft license by the UK Civil Aviation Authority is a very exciting milestone as we look forward to the first vertical launches from UK soil in the year ahead,” said Matt Archer, Director of Launch, Space Agency of the UK in the CAA. statement. “It’s testament to the hard work being done by SaxaVord Spaceport and partners across government to get to this stage, which moves us towards achieving our ambitions of the UK as the leading supplier of small satellite launches in Europe by 2030.”
The UK government first announced plans to build space sports in the United Kingdom in 2014. Four years later, Sutherland, SaxaVord and Cornwall received funding to help get rockets off the ground. But competition in Europe has since increased. In October 2023, Spanish rocket startup PLD Space successfully launched its subsonic Miura 1 rocket from Huelva in southwestern Spain.
