Isar Aerospace, a German startup founded seven years ago, is positioned to become the first in a new generation of European launch companies to reach orbit with a privately funded rocket.
The company announced Friday that the first stage of its Spectrum rocket recently completed a 30-second test-firing on a launch pad in the northernmost reaches of mainland Europe. The nine-engine booster ignited on a launch pad at Andøya Spaceport in Norway on February 14.
The milestone follows a similar test-firing of the Spectrum rocket’s second stage last year. With these two accomplishments, Isar Aerospace says its launch vehicle is qualified for flight.
“We are almost ready for the test flight. All we need is the license,” said Daniel Metzler, co-founder and CEO of Isar Aerospace. “By enabling space access from mainland Europe, we provide a critical resource for ensuring sovereignty and resilience.”
Aside from the normal preparations for a rocket launch—such as mating the two stages of the launcher together and integrating its payload fairing—the primary hurdle remaining for Isar is regulatory in nature. In a statement, Isar said the first flight of the Spectrum rocket will take place “as soon as possible” following approval and licensing from the Norwegian Civil Aviation Authority.
Officials will set the exact launch period during the licensing process, according to Tina Schmitt, an Isar spokesperson.
The fully assembled Spectrum rocket will stand about 92 feet (28 meters) tall and measure more than 6 feet (2 meters) in diameter. The expendable launcher is designed to haul payloads up to 1 metric ton (2,200 pounds) into low-Earth orbit. Spectrum is powered by nine Aquila engines on its first stage, and one engine on the second stage, burning a mixture of propane and liquid oxygen propellants.
Finish line in sight
Named for the Bavarian river, Isar is headquartered near Munich, a hub of the European space industry home to facilities owned by the German space agency and Airbus. Meltzer co-founded Isar with two engineering classmates at Technical University Munich in 2018. The company says it has raised more than 400 million euros (about $420 million), more than any other European launch startup. It is primarily backed by venture capital, but it secured an investment from the NATO Innovation Fund last year.
Isar builds almost all of its rockets in-house, including Spectrum’s Aquila engines.
“The flight will be the first integrated test of tens of thousands of components,” said Josef Fleischmann, Isar’s co-founder and chief technical officer. “Regardless of how far we get, this first test flight will hopefully generate an enormous amount of data and experience which we can apply to future missions.”
Isar is the first European startup to reach this point in development. “Reaching this milestone is a huge success in itself,” Meltzer said in a statement. “And while Spectrum is ready for its first test flight, launch vehicles for flights two and three are already in production.”
Another Bavarian company, Rocket Factory Augsburg, destroyed its first booster during a test-firing on its launch pad in Scotland last year, ceding the frontrunner mantle to Isar. RFA received its launch license from the UK government last month and aims to deliver its second booster to the launch site for hot-fire testing and a launch attempt later this year.
There’s an appetite within the European launch industry for new companies to compete with Arianespace, the continent’s sole operational launch services provider backed by substantial government support. Delays in developing the Ariane 6 rocket and several failures of Europe’s smaller Vega launcher forced European satellite operators to look abroad, primarily to SpaceX, to launch their payloads.
The European Space Agency is organizing the European Launcher Challenge, a competition that will set aside some of the agency’s satellites for launch opportunities with a new crop of startups. Isar is one of the top contenders in the competition to win money from ESA. The agency expects to award funding to multiple European launch providers after releasing a final solicitation later this year.
The first flight of the Spectrum rocket will attempt to reach a polar orbit, flying north from Andøya Spaceport. Located at approximately 69 degrees north latitude, the spaceport is poised to become the world’s northernmost orbital launch site.
Because the inaugural launch of the Spectrum rocket is a test flight, it won’t carry any customer payloads, an Isar spokesperson told Ars.