Five scrubbed attempts in eight months. That is how long it took for Spectrum's second flight to finally leave the pad on the island of Andøya in northern Norway, on 5 September at 22:12 Central European time (23:12 in Bulgaria). Our colleagues at European Spaceflight have patiently kept count of the reasons. In January it was a pressure valve. In March, first bad weather, then a boat that strayed into the exclusion zone. In April a leak in a pressurised tank, in June a problem in the fuel system, and on 4 September the attempt was called off just hours after the roads around the spaceport had already been closed. The sixth time worked.
According to the company, the rocket passed through max-Q, separated its stages and lit the second stage. It then crossed the Kármán line at 100 km, jettisoned the fairing, performed the circularisation burn and released its payload. It reads like a dry checklist. But this is the first time it has happened on a private European rocket. Isar is also billing it as the first orbital launch from continental Europe (Russia's Plesetsk is in Europe too and has been launching rockets for decades, but Brussels evidently doesn't count it).
The first flight, on 30 March 2025, ended around 30 seconds after lift-off, Via Satellite recalls. This time Isar calls the flight a "qualification" mission. In other words, it is part of certifying the rocket for commercial customers, not just another test.
The payloads were selected through the microlauncher competition run by the German Space Agency at DLR, funded under ESA's Boost! programme:
| Payload | Type | Operator |
|---|---|---|
| CyBEEsat | CubeSat | Technical University of Berlin (Germany) |
| TriSat-S | CubeSat | University of Maribor (Slovenia) |
| Platform 6 | CubeSat | EnduroSat (Bulgaria) |
| FramSat-1 | CubeSat | NTNU (Norway) |
| SpaceTeamSat1 | CubeSat | TU Wien Space Team (Austria) |
| Let It Go | Experiment | Dcubed (Germany) |
For us, the third row is the most interesting. Sofia-based EnduroSat has a spacecraft on the first successful flight of a private European rocket, and that kind of line on a portfolio can't be bought. Whether Platform 6 is working is not yet known. In its announcement, Isar says it is still confirming the satellites' health with customers.
Now for the money. At the end of August ESA signed a €197.8m European Launcher Challenge contract with Isar. The first part is conditional: the company has to reach orbit by the end of 2027. Isar has done it with more than a year to spare. Of the competition's three winners, only Isar is already in orbit. RFA has yet to reach a static fire of an upright rocket, and PLD Space is aiming for a MIURA 5 debut by the end of the year.
According to the company, rockets 3 to 7 are already in production. The new 40,000 sq m factory is meant eventually to turn out up to 40 rockets a year, and a second launch site for higher-inclination orbits is being built in Nova Scotia, Canada. Customers are coming too: on 1 September Isar signed with Astroscale Japan, on 15 September with US-based SEOPS for five launches, and Via Satellite also mentions Planet.
There is one odd detail. Two weeks after the flight, co-founder Josef Fleischmann announced his own company, Bavaria Instruments, and almost simultaneously Can Araz was appointed chief technology officer. I wouldn't go looking for drama here; rocket company founders rarely stay for ever. But a change in technical leadership just as series production gets going is worth watching.
"Europe now has sovereign access to space," said chief executive Daniel Metzler. A nice line, but a little premature. One successful rocket carrying five cubes is not yet sovereign access. That will come when Spectrum flies every month and nobody bothers writing articles about it. Still, a month ago no private European rocket had ever reached orbit. Now one has.