The first orbital rocket launched from Continental Europe fell on Sunday (30), after only half a minute of flight from the Norwegian space base of Andøya in the Arctic.
The Spectrum rocket, a two -stage ship developed by the German company Isar Aerospace, began to oscillate after takeoff, turned and fell, according to live images displayed on YouTube.
According to Isar Aerospace, the rocket fell into the water and “the launch platform seems to be intact.” Andøya Space, a Norwegian state -owned company that operates the Andøya Spaceport, near the Lofoten archipelago, announced that it had implemented a “crisis plan” after the “incident.” No human damage or material was registered after the rocket fall, the Regional Police said.
An orbital rocket is a launcher capable of placing useful loads in the orbit of the earth or beyond it. Prior to takeoff, which was postponed several times due to climatic conditions, Isar Aerospace said it had little hope of reaching orbit in its first attempt.
“Our first test flight met all our expectations and it was a great success. We had a perfect take -off, we fly for 30 seconds and even managed to validate our flight interruption system,” said Daniel Metzler, co -founder and director of the young German company.
Two other Spectrum rockets are already in production, according to a statement from the company. Spectrum, 28 meters high per two meters in diameter and capable of carrying a ton in low orbit, made its first test without payload. “Today is an important day for German and European spatial flights,” said German Economy Minister Robert Haben. “Isar Aerospace can and will make a decisive contribution to ensure independent access from Europe to space,” he added. In 2023, there was a first attempted orbital flight of the United Kingdom by Virgin Orbit. The company of billionaire Richard Branson used a Boeing 747 for the launch, which failed and the company went bankrupt.
Continues after advertising
Competitiveness
The space appears prominently in the Draghi report, published last year about the competitiveness of the European Union. Private access to Russian cosmodromos and launchers due to serious tensions with Moscow, Europe was affected by delays in the development of the Ariane 6 rocket and the suspension of the Vega-C launcher after an accident. She only recovered her space sovereignty on March 6, with the first commercial flight of an Ariane 6 from Kourou, French Guiana, after several months without independent access to the space.
Isar Aerospace, founded in 2018 in Munich, is one of the emerging companies of the new Space Economy, which refers to small private companies that are launched into space alongside institutional heavy weights such as Arianespace. Compared to the US, which have large companies such as Elon Musk’s Spacex and Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin, the New Space movement is only in its childhood in Europe.
In addition to Isar Aerospace, German Rocket Factory Augsburg (RFA) and Hyimpulse, Germany, Latitude and Maiaspace da France (a subsidiary of Arianegroup) and Space PLD Space are competing to settle in the European launch platform sector.
Continues after advertising
Sunday’s release has generated “tons of data that teams can now evaluate and learn from them,” said an Isar Aerospace commentator on YouTube. Together with the launchers, various European spaceport projects emerged, from the Portuguese Azores to the British Shetlands, not forgetting Andøya or Esrange, in neighboring Sweden.
Describing themselves as “the first operational spaceport of continental Europe,” Andøya boasts that its location in the Arctic is ideal for the launch of polar orbit satellites or solar synchronization satellites, ie satellites that pass anywhere on the same local solar time every day.
