A German company will attempt to create spaceflight history on Monday (March 23), and you can watch the action live.
Isar Aerospace plans to launch its Spectrum rocket from Andøya Spaceport in northern Norway on Monday, during a window that opens at 4 p.m. EDT (2000 GMT; 9 p.m. local time in Norway). Success would be huge, and not just for Isar: To date, no rocket has ever reached orbit from European soil.
You can watch the attempt live here at Space.com, courtesy of Isar, or directly via the company. Coverage will launch at 3 p.m. EDT (1900 GMT).
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Monday’s flight will be the second ever for the two-stage, 95-foot-tall (28 meters) Spectrum. It launched for the first time on March 30 of last year, also from Andøya.
That test flight didn’t last long: Spectrum suffered an anomaly less than a minute after liftoff and crashed into the ocean near the pad, generating a fireball that seeed particularly dramatic and spectacular against the icy Arctic backdrop.
That outcome was far from surprising; orbital-class rockets rarely succeed on their debut flights. Isar is now ready to take the lessons learned from the first crack and apply them to attempt number two.
“This qualification flight is a deliberate step toward delivering sovereign access to space for Europe and allied nations. Just 10 months after proving that launch vehicles can be designed, built and launched from continental European soil, we’re ready to fly again,” Isar Aerospace CEO and Co‑founder Daniel Metzler stated in a statement on Jan. 16.
Isar attempted to launch a few days later, on Jan. 21, but scrubbed that attempt due to an issue with a pressurization valve. The company repaired the issue later that month and launched tarreceiveing the next launch window, which opened on March 19. Bad weather then pushed the attempt to Monday.
Though this second launch, which Isar calls “Onward and Upward,” is a test flight, it will carry viable payloads (which Spectrum did not do on its debut). Five cubesats and one scientific experiment are going up on the rocket on Monday.
“The insights we gain with this mission will strengthen Europe’s space infrastructure, a capability essential for defense readiness and economic resilience,” Alexandre Dalloneau, vice president of mission and launch operations at Isar Aerospace, stated in the same Jan. 16 statement.
Editor’s note: The original headline of this story erroneously stated that Andoya Spaceport is in Sweden (rather than Norway). It was corrected at 11 a.m. ET on Jan. 21. The story was also updated on March 22 with the new launch date of March 23.
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