The launch of the Isar Aerospace rocket in Norway was aborted immediately before the engines ignited. Why?
The second launch of the small Spectrum rocket from the German manufacturer Isar Aerospace in northern Norway was aborted immediately before the engines ignited. At this point, automatic control had already taken command of the rocket.
Apparently a technical anomaly was identified that prevented the engines from firing. Isar Aerospace initially gave no reason for the cancellation.
The launch of the rocket has been completely canceled for this Wednesday and will be repeated as soon as possible, it said in a live broadcast. There had previously been a delay of around 20 minutes in the launch originally planned for 9 p.m. local time because a boat was in the restricted area around the Andøya cosmodrome.
The rocket was last on the launch site in January. After problems with a pressure valve, the start was canceled and postponed. This time there were also weather-related delays in advance. During the first launch attempt around a year ago, the rocket only flew for 30 seconds and then fell into the sea and exploded.
Spectrum was intended to bring payloads into orbit for the first time
During the mission, known as “Onward and Upward,” the 28-meter-high, two-stage rocket was supposed to bring payloads into orbit for the first time during a qualification flight – five mini-satellites (CubeSats) and an experiment.
The Munich rocket start-up Isar Aerospace, founded in 2018, wants to make European space history with its launches in Norway. Spectrum is intended to be the first rocket to carry satellites into orbit from continental European soil by a private company. This would promote Europe’s sovereignty in space.
In the run-up to the launch, Isar Aerospace boss Daniel Metzler expressed the hope that the rocket would at least make progress compared to the first flight. However, he left it open whether he expected a flight into space. If the second flight were to be completely successful and the satellites reached Earth orbit, the third launch is already planned as a commercial mission.
However, a failure in the second launch would not be a surprise to industry experts. Almost all new small rockets struggle with technical problems during their first flights. Even the technology entrepreneur Elon Musk was only successful on the fourth flight of his first rocket, Falcon 1.
Isar Aerospace boss Metzler points out that the rocket consists of around 100,000 parts. “A single faulty component could prevent us from making it into orbit.” Only during the actual test flight could the engineers collect the data to find and correct errors in the design.
Isar Aerospace is aiming to ramp up series production as quickly as possible. Further launches of the rocket with payloads of up to one ton are planned for this year. Work is already underway on the seventh copy.
Great demand from the military
Isar Aerospace boss Metzler sees huge demand for rockets, recently especially from the military. A year ago, 85 percent of demand came from the commercial sector – now 60 percent is for military applications. Isar Aerospace’s launches are fully booked up to and including 2028, said Metzler, although he did not want to say how many flights are expected during this time.
Isar Aerospace is one of five small rocket developers supported by the European Space Agency (ESA) in a competition (European Launcher Challenge). The prerequisite is that they achieve a successful orbital flight by the end of 2027. However, in mid-February, the Scottish rocket company Orbex went bankrupt because a financing round fell through.
Isar Aerospace, on the other hand, is said to be in talks for a financing round worth 250 million euros, according to the Bloomberg news agency. The startup should then be valued at two billion euros. CEO Metzler recently did not want to comment on the reports.
The strongest competitor from Germany for Isar Aerospace is the start-up Rocket Factory Augsburg (RFA), which is planning its first flight in the summer. A second RFA launch would not be planned until 2027, RFA boss Indulis Kalnins just said at a space conference in Munich. With a payload of 1.3 tons, the RFA rocket is said to be more powerful than the Isar Aerospace rocket.
RFA is majority owned by the Bremen-based OHB Group and is already in the black. The investment value of the RFA valuation approach, which is included proportionately in the OHB consolidated financial statements, rose by 9.8 (previous year: 3.3) million euros in 2025 to now 145.4 million euros. OHB boss Marco Fuchs recently spoke of a bottleneck in rockets that was unimaginable years ago in order to transport all of the planned huge satellite fleets into space.
It is still unclear whether the giant constellation of Bundeswehr communications satellites in the “BW SatCom 4” project will already be launched into space by small German rockets. The first 40 satellites are scheduled to go into operation in 2029. The first new radar satellites from Rheinmetall’s joint venture with the Finnish company Iceye will launch with Elon Musk’s SpaceX rockets. The radar satellites have a super-precise resolution and can detect objects up to 25 centimeters in size.
Gerhard Hegmann is a freelance business editor and has been reporting particularly on the defense and space industries for decades.