German startup Isar Aerospace launched a space rocket from a site in Arctic Norway on Saturday, bringing Europe closer to offering satellite flights from its own soil.
It was not immediately known whether the uncrewed Spectrum rocket would achieve Isar's ambition of becoming the first orbital flight to originate from Europe.
"Access to space remains one of the biggest constraints for the space industry and national security architecture," Isar Aerospace co-founder and CEO Daniel Metzler said in a statement ahead of Saturday's launch.
German Chancellor Friedrich Merz visited Isar's launch site in March, underscoring Europe's efforts to establish greater autonomy as the global order once championed by the United States is being upended by U.S. President Donald Trump.
Blasting off from Norway's Arctic Andoeya Spaceport, the uncrewed Spectrum, designed for small and medium-sized payloads, carried five small satellites as well as an in-flight technological experiment, according to Isar.
It was Isar's second launch, coming 18 months after the company's first rocket plunged to the ground and exploded in a fiery spectacle shortly after takeoff from the same site. No one was injured at the time.
The March 2025 launch was nonetheless deemed a success by the company for generating large amounts of data for its developers, it said then.
Saturday's launch was intended as "both the vehicle's qualification mission and its first flight carrying payload," the Bavarian company has said.
Global players in the satellite launch market include Elon Musk's SpaceX (SPCX.O), which launches from the United States, and French ArianeGroup, a joint venture between Airbus (AIR.PA) and Safran (SAF.PA) that uses a spaceport in South America's French Guiana.
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