The Atlantic Spaceport Consortium has successfully launched a pair of atmospheric rockets from Santa Maria Island in Portugal. The company explained that the flights were “a clear demonstration of the growing ambition and national capacity of the Portuguese space sector.”
Founded in 2020, the Atlantic Spaceport Consortium (ASC) aims to develop a commercial spaceport on the island of Santa Maria, 1,500 kilometres off the Portuguese coast.
As it works toward funding the construction of the spaceport, the company has been working with NAV Portugal, the agency responsible for managing the country’s national airspace, to define the guidelines that a future spaceport will be required to adhere to. These guidelines, which include the definition of exclusion zones, were put to an initial test with a pair of atmospheric rocket launches over the weekend.
For the two test flights, a 3.35-metre rocket called GAMA was utilized. ACS developed, manufactured, and operated the rocket, which was itself a demonstration of the country’s ambitions.
The first of the two flights was launched from a mobile platform at 13:04 UTC on 27 September. The rocket reached an altitude of 5,596 metres. The second was launched at 11:49 UTC on 28 September 2024. According to the company, the second launch ‘was not perfect,’ but it did not provide any further details on what occurred during the flight.
“With this initiative, we wanted to demonstrate that the operational competency to launch and recover this type of rockets, as well as the industrial capacity to develop and manufacture them, exists in Portugal,” said Bruno Carvalho, a director at the Atlantic Spaceport Consortium. “Our vision is to continue fine-tuning procedures as a way to build up the capacity for larger orbital rockets”.
