On a sunny Sunday in Norway, German small rocket developer Isar Aerospace tested its Spectrum rocket for the first time, roughly two years after it initially hoped for a launch. The rocket was only briefly airborne before turning upside down and crashing nearby.
The seven-year-old startup spun out from the Technical University of Munich and aims to take on the likes of Elon Musk’s SpaceX for satellite launch services. Its rocket is a two-stage vehicle designed to place up to 1,000kgs into low Earth orbit, although the test rocket did not carry any payload this time. Isar Aerospace has raised more than €400m from investors including Earlybird, HV Capital, Lakestar, Vsquared Ventures and former SpaceX executive Bülent Altan.
Although the launch failed early on in its flight, Josef Aschbacher, the director general of the European Space Agency (ESA), called it a “success to get off the pad, and lots of data already obtained”, adding that “rocket launch is hard,” he wrote on X.
Isar cofounder and CEO Daniel Metzler said in a statement that the “first test flight met all our expectations, achieving a great success.”
He tells Sifted the majority of the rocket’s manufacturing is done in-house, and that the startup is currently building a new factory in Munich to ramp up production. Once that new factory is up and running, he says it will be able to work at a pace of about one rocket per week.
The test flight
After being postponed for nearly a week, Isar’s rocket was airborne for less than 30 seconds before it turned upside down and crashed. The company said the crash did not blow up the launch pad.
The flight took off from the Andøya Spaceport — which Isar says is the first operational spaceport in continental Europe, officially opened in late 2023. Metzler told Sifted prior to the test that the point of the launch was to collect data — like sensory data through engines, fluid systems, guidance and navigation and software algorithms — to improve subsequent flights.
The data collected from the flight will be used to fine-tune Isar’s second test flight, the timing of which is still up in the air. Metzler says the second flight, unlike the first, will carry more than 10 payloads, and that it’s already in production.
As for when it might get to orbit, Metzler emphasises that it took SpaceX four attempts to make it to orbit. “I’m determined to be better than SpaceX on that.”
The test flight was a long time coming — with Isar teasing its debut since at least 2023. The main recent holdup was a pending flight license. But the delay was more of a function of bureaucratic hangups than anything else, the CEO says.
“If you look at a license, it’s tens of thousands of pages of documentation [for] an agency that has never done it before — which, frankly, didn’t know what a rocket looks like on the inside before. We had to drive bilateral governmental agreements between Norway and Germany,” Metzler said. “There’s roughly 10 countries right now in the world which can launch rockets, and there’s a reason it’s not 100.”
Spacetech will ‘more and more integrate into defence’
The launch comes at a time when the US has grown increasingly protectionist and Europe is worrying about its sovereignty and defence spending. The EU has announced plans to funnel more euros into defence, but the continent is still heavily reliant on American companies like SpaceX for its Starlink satellite internet.
That’s a big problem for the defence industry, Metzler points out. “We’re at the level of tech where your airplanes literally…don’t shoot if they don’t have space connectivity through satellites,” he says. “You need to have space superiority first; only then can you actually [have] air superiority.”
He points out that the US and China are pushing far ahead: “The rest of the world is lagging behind.
“It’s really about having that capability to be independent — that is absolutely necessary. And space, going forward, will just more and more integrate into defence,” argues Metzler.
He says Isar’s first two test flights are financed through the German government, but that they are “talking to governments, including defence ministries, all over the world.”
Metzler says there are no immediate plans to fundraise but that he wouldn’t rule it out.
For now, VCs and prospective government contractors will surely be watching its next test flight to see if Isar actually does fulfill Metzler’s hope — and get into space.
Read the orginal article: https://sifted.eu/articles/isar-aerospace-test-flight-news/
