Space: Shetland is first UK spaceport for vertical rocket launches
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The first rocket launches from SaxaVord Spaceport are expected next year
Three... two... one... blast off! A site in Shetland is preparing to send rockets into space.
The site is called SaxaVord, and they hope to begin launching in 2024.
The first rockets will be vertical launches, which means they will go directly up into space, launching facing the sky.
At first these won't be going high enough to reach outer-space but by 2025 they hope to do 'orbital launches', which send rockets up to orbit around the Earth in space.
What will be launched into space from Shetland?
SaxaVord will be allowed to send up to 30 rockets a year.
These will be used to take things like satellites up into space.
Satellites are used to try predict the weather, view the Earth from far away, and also for things like mobile phone service.
Some satellites can even take amazing pictures of Earth from space, like this Nasa one in 2017 showing a hurricane developing.
You might have heard of GPS - it stands for Global Positioning System and is a type of technology that we use to get around when we're out and about, and it's used on things like Google Maps. We can only use GPS because of a big set of satellites in space.
Where is Shetland?
The SaxaVord site is in Shetland, which is a group of islands in Northern Scotland.
The site is right at the top of Shetland, in a place called Unst.
This picture shows what the blast-off should look like. You shouldn't have to wait too long - hopefully we will get to see some pictures of the launches next year
Has the UK tried to launch rockets before?
The first UK spaceport was meant to start launching rockets from Cornwall.
They tried to send one up earlier this year, but it didn't work.
The rocket was on an American Virgin Orbit jumbo jet. Although the launch failed, they managed to get the jet back home to base.
Virgin orbit: UK space launch ends in failure
Since then, the spaceport has been under further development, and it's often used for some pretty cool school trips and days out.
In Edinburgh, there's a company called Skyora that's also keen to send rockets into space.
It says it hopes to be the first UK company to launch from Britain in the next few years.
- Published10 January 2023
- Published23 January 2023
