A German company will attempt to make spaceflight history on Wednesday (March 25), and you can watch the action live.
Isar Aerospace plans to launch its Spectrum rocket from Andøya Spaceport in northern Norway on Wednesday, 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 begin at 3 p.m. EDT (1900 GMT).
Wednesday'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 looked 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 said in a statement on Jan. 16.
Isar tried to launch a few days later, on Jan. 21, but scrubbed that attempt due to an issue with a pressurization valve. The company fixed the issue later that month and began targeting the next launch window, which opened on March 19. Bad weather pushed the attempt to Monday (March 23), and then to Wednesday.
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, said in the same Jan. 16 statement.
Editor's note: The original headline of this story erroneously said 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, then again on March 23 with the new target of March 25.
