The UK’s Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) has confirmed that SaxaVord will not need a spaceport licence to host the maiden flight of the HyImpulse SR75 rocket.
SaxaVord Spaceport is a proposed vertical launch facility being built on a small island off the North coast of Scotland. Shetland Space Centre Ltd, the company behind the spaceport, received approval to begin construction in February 2022. The company submitted an application to the CAA for a spaceport licence in March 2022.
According to the CAA, suborbital rocket launches from the SaxaVord will not require the facility to first have its spaceport licence as long as the flights do not exceed an altitude of 50 kilometres and are equipped with engines below a predetermined size. The maiden SR75 flight will only reach an altitude of approximately 47 kilometres. Additionally, its 75 kN hybrid rocket motor has been judged to be below the threshold.
Is SaxaVord ready for HyImpulse?
To date, Shetland Space Centre Ltd has completed the first SaxaVord launch pad which will be used exclusively by Rocket Factory Augsburg. An additional two launch pads are planned. The company has also made significant progress on Hangar A, an integration building.
In December 2022, SaxaVord received a £378,000 grant from the UK Space Agency to build a launch rail for suborbital launch vehicles. Wasting no time, the company made an announcement on the same day the grant was made public that Lerwick Engineering and Fabrication and T12 Consultancy would design and build the launch rail.
According to T12, the design of the launch rail “was delivered within a tight timescale to support the client’s ambitious launch schedule.” This leaves construction and installation still to be completed as SaxaVord gears up for the launch of the debut of the HyImpulse SR75.
Initial estimates from SaxaVord had the flight being launched in October. However, on 28 July the CAA issued HyImpulse a launch licence for the flight that specified a launch window of 1 December 2023 to 30 November 2024. As a result, if SaxaVord was aiming to be ready to launch by October, it’d likely be ahead of schedule on the suborbital side of its offering.
On August 18, The Shetland Times reported that construction workers at SaxaVord had been given time off. The reason given was that “the project was so far ahead of schedule.” Could this be a result of being ahead of schedule for the debut of the SR75 or is there something else going on?
