YOU wait decades for a spaceport and then two come along at once. That was the feeling at the Farnborough International Airshow this week, where the UK Space Agency revealed plans to fund the creation of a rocket launch pad on the bleak A鈥橫hoine peninsula on Scotland鈥檚 north coast.
US-based aerospace contractor Lockheed Martin expects to use a version of US firm Rocket Lab鈥檚 Electron rocket, which only flew for the first time this year, at the site.
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The UK Space Agency is also backing plans by US-based Virgin Orbit to fly satellite-launching rockets strapped to aircraft that will take off from a former Royal Air Force base in Cornwall, England (visualised below). Both spaceports are expected to start launches by 2021.
The government says it hopes to give firms and universities that are building small satellites in the UK the option of launching them from home turf, rather than having to ship them abroad to be flown as 鈥渟econdary payloads鈥� on larger missions.
This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淯K spaceports get the go-ahead鈥�