The primary spaceport in continental Europe is operational. Andøya Spaceport was opened on Nov. 2 by H.R.H Crown Prince Haakon in an official ceremony.
The spaceport is an element of Andøya Space and is situated in Nordmela on Norway’s Andøya island. It’ll be the launch site of the European launch service company Isar Aerospace. The opening of Andøya Spaceport is, due to this fact, a vital milestone within the journey of Isar Aerospace to the launchpad. It’ll be the place to begin for the corporate’s first test flight of its two-stage launch vehicle, Spectrum.
Once fully built up, Andøya Spaceport could have several launchpads to launch small to medium satellites into space — nonetheless, the primary of those launchpads, its payload integration facilities and mission control center are reserved for Isar Aerospace and designed per the corporate’s specifications.
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“Today, Norway, the Andøya region and Isar Aerospace take a giant step towards space. During the last five years, now we have built a rocket that may help to resolve probably the most crucial bottleneck within the European space industry — sovereign and competitive access to space,” CEO and Co-Founding father of Isar Aerospace, Daniel Metzler, said in an announcement. “Along with Andøya Spaceport, our team has created a superb piece of engineering, the primary orbital launch site in continental Europe, which can bring this access to space to Norway and back to Europe.
“For Isar Aerospace, this step equals entering the ultimate stages of our path to first flight. For Europe, it means having the ability to harness the ability of the space platform.”
From its location far north of a coastline, Andøya Spaceport is right for launching satellites that may need a sun-synchronous orbit around Earth. In other words, it’s an ideal option for satellites that’ll omit a set point on Earth at the identical solar mean time every day, in addition to for satellites with polar orbits.
The aerospace market currently has a powerful demand for launch sites able to boosting satellites to such sorts of orbits, as these locations are briefly supply globally.
“The opening of the spaceport on Andøya island marks a vital milestone for Norway, European Latest Space industry, and our partnership with Isar Aerospace,” President of Andøya Spaceport, Ingun Berget, said within the statement. “This permits us to have the primary satellite launches ever from European soil to happen from Andøya.”