The Spectrum launcher, developed by German company Isar Aerospace, has lifted off from the Andøya spaceport in Norway and placed its payload into low Earth orbit. This was the rocket’s second flight; the first, carried out in 2025, managed only to clear the launch pad for 30 seconds before crashing into the sea.
Spectrum is 28 metres tall and 2 metres in diameter. It is powered by ten engines, nine on the first stage and one on the second, and is designed to carry payloads of up to 1,000 kilogrammes to low Earth orbit (LEO).
Unlike the first flight, which carried no passengers, this mission, named "Onward and Upward", included six commercial and educational payloads, among them several CubeSats and an experiment designed to test new technologies in space and give European students practical, hands-on experience.
A milestone for the European Launcher Challenge
The Director General of the European Space Agency, Josef Aschbacher, described the launch as historic and hailed it as the first time a European competitor in the launcher sector has reached orbit. He said that Isar Aerospace, founded only eight years ago, has taken an important step towards a more diverse and autonomous European space sector.
