Just days after a failed satellite launch in the UK, Sweden inaugurated its new launch on Friday as the race heats up.
Per
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Just days after a failed satellite launch in the UK, Sweden inaugurated its new launch on Friday as the race to be the first country to put satellites into orbit from the European continent intensifies.
Sweden’s King Carl XVI Gustaf, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Swedish Prime Minister Ulf Kristersson cut the ribbon at a rite at the Esrange spaceport, described as “continental Europe’s first satellite launch complex. “
“There are many reasons why we want to push forward the European space program,” von der Leyen said. “Europe has its foot in space and will keep it. “
It is an extension of the Esrange Space Center in the Swedish Arctic, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) from the city of Kiruna.
Around 15 million euros ($16. 3 million) has been invested in the site, which is expected to complement the European hub in Kourou, French Guiana.
It will also provide release functions at a time when cooperation with Russia and the liberation of Baikonur in Kazakhstan have been restricted by the war in Ukraine.
Esrange’s public operator, the Swedish Space Corporation (SSC), aims to launch its first satellite from the “first quarter of 2024,” a spokesman told AFP on Friday.
This would make Sweden the first country in continental Europe, Russia, to send a satellite from its soil.
Other European spaceports are in the race.
Projects in the Azores archipelago in Portugal, the island of Andoya in Norway, Andalusia in Spain and Great Britain, among others, compete to be the first to succeed.
Rocket Factory Augsburg (RFA), a German specialist in small launchers used in countries and companies sending more compact satellites into space, recently said its first launch will take place at SaxaVord in the Shetland Islands in late 2023.
A launch of the first rocket into orbit from Britain, on a Boeing 747 Virgin Orbit that blasted off from a spaceport in Cornwall, ended in failure on Tuesday.
The satellite industry is booming, with the number of satellites in service in 2040 expected to reach 100,000, the SSC said, up from 5,000 today.
Along with a reusable rocket allocation called Themis, Esrange will also host the European Space Agency’s tests of rockets capable of landing on Earth, to those used through SpaceX, one of the corporations owned by billionaire Elon Musk.
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