A German company’s hopes of launching the UK’s first vertical rocket into orbit this year may have been extinguished, after the first stage of its rocket exploded during a hot-fire test at the SaxaVord spaceport in Shetland, UK. Rocket Factory Augsburg (RFA) conducted...
For Eutelsat, a leading geostationary and low Earth orbit communications satellite operator (with the acquisition of OneWeb), a lack of available launch slots over the next five years is of immediate concern, according to keynote speaker Vijay Thakur, the company’s...
At the northernmost edges of the UK lies Unst, one of the North Isles of the Shetland Islands. The quiet island off the Northeast of the Scottish Mainland only has a population of 632. And yet, it will soon be home to a main plank of the UK space effort, the SaxaVord...
The Virgin Orbit launch provider was celebrating its third launch success in a row of its air-launched LauncherOne rocket. The “Stage Zero” Boeing 747 (Cosmic Girl) carrier aircraft, with the LaunchOne rocket slung under the port wing, took off from the...
Sutherland Spaceport in Scotland has survived an attempt by Danish billionaire Anders Povlsen and his company Wildland Ltd to halt development of one of the UK’s potential spaceport sites. A ruling published on 20 August by the Scottish Court of Session found against...
Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo Unity rocket plane was air-dropped on a suborbital test flight from its mother ship WhiteKnightTwo Eve (which lifted off from Spaceport America at 1524 GMT) from an altitude of 13km at 1615 GMT on 12 December. An attempted ignition was...