Orbex, Skyrora, and Rocket Factory Augsburg (RFA) all said late last year that they planned to launch their first flights from the UK in 2025. But—as is often the case in launch—timelines are starting to slip to the right just halfway through the year.
While Germany-based RFA has confirmed it’s on track for a late-2025 launch of its RFA One vehicle from the SaxaVord spaceport in the Shetland Islands, leaders at UK-based companies Orbex and Skyrora told Payload they probably won’t be ready to fly until 2026.
What’s the hold up: SaxaVord spaceport is the only launch site in the UK that can host vertical launches, and the limited capacity has created a traffic jam.
“SaxaVord, at the moment, they’ve got one completed pad ready for RFA…Others have had some of the ground infrastructure started, so they’ve prepared the ground for concrete to be laid, but it’s not there yet,” Matthew Archer, head of launch at the UK Space Agency, told Payload. “It’s not too surprising that in this early phase, we do get the occasional bottleneck.”
Government regulations are also keeping at least one of the rockets grounded: Skyrora’s Skylark L vehicle is technically ready to fly, but licensing delays have pushed the likelihood of a flight from SaxaVord this year to 50/50, according to Derek Harris, Skyrora’s head of business operations.
“If we do go ahead this year, we need to be overseas..so while I don’t want to say it’s going to be missed completely, it does look like we will because the priority is to do it from Scotland,” Harris said.
Moving pains: Orbex, which received £20M (€23.5) from the UK government in January to develop its Prime launcher, initially planned to hold its first launch at its own spaceport in Sutherland.
However, Orbex decided to halt construction in December and shift operations to SaxaVord to try to hit a 2025 launch timeline. Ultimately, the move had the opposite effect.
“We have had some rework to do on some licensing with the [Civil Aviation Authority]…and obviously slightly different trajectories and all that stuff. So that’s pushed us into 2026,” Orbex CEO Phil Chambers said.
Long-term, Orbex’s goal is to complete the Sutherland spaceport, which will allow a bottleneck-free launch cadence.
Why it matters: Delays are overwhelmingly common across the launch sector; however, the situation in Europe is uniquely pressing thanks to an ESA-funded prize pot. The European Launcher Challenge (ELC), which stands to offer commercial launchers up to €169M to develop European launch capabilities, requires that winning proposals fly a demonstration mission by the end of 2027—or risk losing funding.
Each of these companies has completed their own lengthy proposals for the ELC, outlining the technical and commercial benefits of their particular launch services. But not everyone is going to get through to the next stage.
Once ESA selects the winners, governments will make funding decisions based on where the winners are headquartered. That means Orbex and Skyrora may end up in a winner-take-all battle for survival.
“We definitely have made a bid for money to be there for an ELC participation, and we generally said that we would probably end up picking one winner,” Archer said.
