Portugal’s Atlantic Spaceport Consortium has signed a cooperation agreement with NAV Portugal to support commercial feasibility testing of building a launch facility on the island of Santa Maria.
The Atlantic Spaceport Consortium (ASC) was founded in 2019 with the aim of building a commercial spaceport on the island of Santa Maria, approximately 1,500 kilometres off the coast of the Portuguese mainland. The consortium is entirely composed of the Portuguese companies Ilex Space and Optimal Structural Solutions.
On 13 August, ASC announced that it had signed a cooperation agreement with NAV Portugal, the country’s national air navigation service provider. NAV Portugal is responsible for managing and controlling air traffic within Portugal’s airspace.
Under the cooperation agreement, the pair aim to define the guidelines that a future spaceport will need to adhere to when launching from Santa Maria. This includes defining exclusion zones, examining how to monitor and authorize launch activities, and studying under what conditions to impose partial or total launch restrictions for safety reasons.
“This project represents a unique opportunity for NAV Portugal to contribute to the development of the space sector in Portugal, promoting a leap that will place the Azores at the forefront of suborbital and atmospheric launches and boosting economic development in the region,” said Ana Cristina Lima, NAV Portugal’s board member responsible for the Atlantic Region.
ASC is working toward the launch of a small atmospheric rocket in September of this year. The launch will be an early test of the protocols that will be defined as a result of the pair’s cooperation.
