Cornwall Launches UK's First Space Mission

Britain is set to become the latest member of the small group of nations to have sent rockets into the sky from their own soil. The launch will take place from a seaside town better known for surfing and sandy beaches than space adventures.

The mission will take off from Spaceport Cornwall in Newquay, southwest England. This is the first of a number of bases that the UK is establishing in order to become a major player in the space sector. There is increasing demand for launch capacity, and the UK is well placed to provide this.

The flight, which is scheduled for late Monday, will use a horizontal launch, with a rocket deployed from beneath a modified Boeing Co. 747 jet. Two Scottish bases are committed to Cape Canaveral-style vertical launches by the end of the year, while three other UK sites are seeking approval for horizontal launches.

British entrepreneur Richard Branson says that the upcoming Cornish mission represents a breakthrough for the space program in Europe and the UK in particular. Branson's Virgin Orbit Holdings Inc. business will be flying the mission.

"It's a milestone," the billionaire said in an interview. "You've never before had a launch from Europe. And it's nice that the UK will be the first place in Europe to put rockets and satellites into space. I'm very supportive of that."

Melissa Thorpe, head of Spaceport Cornwall, said the Virgin Orbit launch will mark a "phenomenal moment" for a project that began life as a bid to bolster business at Newquay airport after the Royal Air Force ended flights from its runway 15 years ago. The spaceport remains owned by the local council.

Britain is reviving its space program with the development of new spaceports. This comes 50 years after the country abandoned its previous efforts to establish an independent launch capability. Fewer than 10 nations currently have the ability to send satellites into orbit from their own soil, and there are no such sites in Western Europe. The European Space Agency uses the Guiana Space Centre in South America for its missions.

The UK is planning to increase its deployment of small satellites, spurred by the drive to create new mega constellations for broadband communications. Global launches have increased threefold to 1,700 satellites a year since 2012 and are expected to double again by 2030, according to the UK Space Agency.

The space industry in Britain is already worth £16.5 billion annually and supports close to 50,000 jobs. Scotland is a leading builder of small satellites, according to Ian Annett, the space agency’s deputy chief executive officer.

Although the UK has a lot of expertise in the space sector, it has been unable to get its craft into orbit. This is a market worth about £20 billion a year globally, or 6% of the space value chain.

The UK's northerly location is not ideal for launching geostationary satellites, which orbit 36,000 kilometers (22,000 miles) from the Earth and are usually sent from closer to the equator. However, it is perfectly matched to deployments into low-earth orbit at 2,000 kilometers or below.

"We have a lot of expertise in designing and building satellites, and we're attracting operating centers from major global firms," Annett said in an interview. "However, we don't currently have the capability to launch them."

The UK mission will be a crucial demonstration of the flexibility of Virgin Orbit's aircraft-based launch model, according to Branson. This will be the first time the California-based company has flown from the UK, and it is a key step in proving the viability of their launch system. Virgin Group owns about 75% of the company following its listing on the Nasdaq stock exchange.

Virgin Orbit CEO Dan Hart said Sunday that the mission will deploy nine satellites for multiple customers and should be followed by further sorties from Spaceport Cornwall, including another this year if a payload can be put together.

The UK's Civil Aviation Authority is progressing an application from a site in Scotland where rockets will blast away vertically. This is part of the UK's plan to move beyond runway-based operations.

Annett mentioned that the concrete for the launch pads at SaxaVord in the Shetland Islands has already been poured. The purpose of these pads is to launch payloads that weigh up to 1.5 metric tons into sun-synchronous, polar, and high inclination orbits.

A trial mission is planned late this year by Lockheed Martin Corp. and partner ABL Space Systems. This will be among a number of companies seeking to compete with Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies Corp.

The proposed Space Hub Sutherland on the northern Scottish mainland is also in the running for Britain’s first vertical launch. The Space Hub Sutherland plans to offer small-satellite missions with local rocket developer Orbital Express Launch.

There are several other locations seeking to provide runway-based horizontal launches, including Spaceport Snowdonia in north Wales, and two further Scottish sites — Prestwick Spaceport, west of Glasgow, and Spaceport Machrihanish, on the Kintyre peninsular. Another project, Spaceport 1, envisages vertical takeoffs from an island in the Outer Hebrides.

For now, the focus is on Spaceport Cornwall as Britain makes its first foray into an increasingly competitive sector. This is an exciting time for the country as it looks to establish itself in the space industry.

"It's taken a lot of hard work to get to this point," said Annett. "Launches are tough, and there's a bit of a mini space race going on in Europe, with countries like Norway and Sweden also wanting to develop their own capabilities."