Five CubeSats reached low Earth orbit on an Isar Aerospace flight, a first for a privately funded European rocket and the first orbital success launched from continental Europe.
The Spectrum rocket lifted off from Andoya Spaceport in Norway at 20:12 UTC on September 5, completing stage separation, upper-stage ignition and fairing deployment before deploying all five payloads after a circularization burn.
Chief executive Daniel Metzler said the team had achieved in a few years what took the European space industry decades, giving Europe sovereign access to space and opening a new chapter for its spaceflight. He said the company now turns to scaling rocket production, working through its order pipeline and meeting global demand.
The success followed months of setbacks. Earlier attempts were called off over a pressurization valve issue, a boat entering the exclusion zone, a leak in a composite overwrapped pressure vessel and off-nominal behavior in the rocket’s fluid systems.
Five more Spectrum rockets were already in different production stages as of January, per the company, and the new headquarters should one day support up to 40 launches a year. The expansion is meant to carry the company from its now-completed qualification flight into operational missions against a growing order backlog, according to the company.
The flight also hands Europe an independent route to orbit at a moment when governments across the continent are pushing for sovereign launch capability, and makes Andoya Spaceport the site of the region’s first successful orbital launch.
