ESA · Ruimte

Isar Aerospace Achieves First Orbital Launch from Continental Europe

German company Isar Aerospace has successfully launched its Spectrum rocket into orbit from Andøya Spaceport in Norway, marking a historic first for continental Europe.

The two-stage Spectrum vehicle, standing 28 meters tall and 2 meters in diameter with ten engines, is designed to carry payloads of up to 1000 kg to low Earth orbit. This launch follows a previous test flight that successfully demonstrated liftoff.

ESA's Director General Josef Aschbacher hailed the launch as a significant achievement for Isar Aerospace, a company founded just eight years ago and supported by the European Space Agency. He noted it as a crucial step towards a more diverse and autonomous European launch service sector.

This mission, named 'Onward and Upward,' carried six commercial and educational CubeSats, along with an experiment to test new technologies in orbit. The mission is supported by ESA's Boost! program and the German Space Agency (DLR) through the first Microlauncher Competition.

Isar Aerospace has received ongoing support from ESA, including initial backing from its Business Incubation Centre and co-funding through the Boost! program, which aids commercial space transportation services. This flight was specifically supported under a Boost! contract for the development of the Spectrum launch service.

The launch also fulfills the first milestone of ESA's European Launcher Challenge, which requires selected launch service providers to achieve an orbital launch by 2027. Isar Aerospace is the first provider to meet this requirement.

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