Rocket Engine Explodes During Test At Scottish Spaceport

A rocket engine exploded in flames during a test at the SaxaVord Spaceport in Scotland, which last year became Britain’s first licensed vertical rocket launch site.

BBC footage showed a large explosion late on Monday at the site in the Shetland Islands off the northern coast of Scotland. It spewed great plumes of fire and smoke into the air.

The site had been evacuated prior to the test and no one was injured, SaxaVord and its German partner, Rocket Factory Augsburg (RFA), said in separate statements.

“This was a test, and test campaigns are designed to identify issues prior to the next stage,” a spokesman for SaxaVord said. “We will work with RFA to understand and learn from the causes and support them as they move forward to the next phase of their preparations.”

RFA said it was trying to gather information to resolve what happened following an “anomaly” during the test, one of a number of trials in the run-up to a launch.

The launch pad had been “saved and is secured”, it added.

SaxaVord, which hopes to become the first British site to undertake a vertical satellite launch into space, received a key safety license from regulators in April, paving the way for a launch later this year.

The space market is forecast to be worth over a trillion-dollars by 2030 as companies around the world plan to deploy thousands of internet-beaming satellites.

(Reporting by Sachin Ravikumar, editing by Elizabeth Piper)