Sweden inaugurates new satellite launch site
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Just days after a failed British satellite launch, Sweden inaugurated its new launch site on Friday as the race heats up to become the first country to send satellites into orbit from the European continent.
Sweden’s King Carl XVI Gustaf, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Sweden’s Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson cut the ribbon during a ceremony at “Spaceport Esrange”, which is described as “the mainland’s first satellite launch complex”.
“There are many good reasons why we need to speed up the European space programme,” von der Leyen said. “Europe has its foothold in space and will keep it.”
The site is an extension of the Esrange Space Center in Sweden’s Arctic, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) from the city of Kiruna.
About 15 million euros ($16.3 million) have been invested in the site, which is expected to serve as a complement to Europe’s space hub in Kourou, French Guiana.
It will also provide launch capabilities at a time when cooperation with Russia and the Baikonur launch site in Kazakhstan has been limited by the war in Ukraine.
Esrange’s state operator, the Swedish Space Company (SSC), aims to launch its first satellite from the site “in the first quarter of 2024”, a spokesman told AFP on Friday.
It would make Sweden the first country in continental Europe – excluding Russia – to launch a satellite from its soil.
Other European spaceports are also in the competition.
Projects in Portugal’s Azores archipelago, Norway’s Andoya Island, Spain’s Andalusia and the UK are all competing to be the first to succeed.
Rocket Factory Augsburg (RFA), a German specialist in smaller launch vehicles increasingly used by countries and companies sending more compact satellites into space, recently said its first launch would take place at SaxaVord in the Shetland Islands in late 2023.
An attempt to launch the first rocket into orbit from Britain – on a Virgin Orbit Boeing 747 that took off from a spaceport in Cornwall – ended in failure on Tuesday.
The satellite industry is booming, with the number of satellites in operation by 2040 expected to reach 100,000, the SSC said, compared with 5,000 now.
With a reusable rocket project called Themis, Esrange will also host the European Space Agency’s tests of rockets that can land back on Earth, similar to those used by SpaceX, one of the companies owned by billionaire Elon Musk.
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