Scotland’s first space venture, Skyrora’s first attempt to launch the Skylark L rocket, failed when it unexpectedly crashed into the Norwegian sea.
Skylark L can be described as a suborbital spacecraft. Designed to be launched vertically, it is said to reach more than four times the speed of sound and is expected to reach an altitude of 125 kilometers. But it can’t get out of Earth’s orbit. The flight trial, conducted this month from a mobile launch pad in Langanes, Iceland, was planned as a stepping stone to scale the design to a larger Skylark XL vehicle capable of reaching true orbit.
Unfortunately, the initial launch of the smaller Skylark L did not go as planned. “The vehicle left the launch pad and experienced an anomaly, landing in the Norwegian Sea about 500 meters from the launch site. No humans or wildlife were harmed and the vehicle is currently being rescued. The vehicle is currently being rescued,” Skyrora said in a statement last Thursday. “More tracking systems, boats and planes were used,” it said.
You can watch Skylark L on the launch pad ahead of this important launch in the video below.
Headquartered in Edinburgh, Scotland, Skyrora hopes to launch a commercial rocket service that flies modest payloads to low Earth orbit. Skylark XL will be a three-stage, light-class launch vehicle that will deliver the spacecraft in sun-synchronous or polar orbits.
It is said that about 70 percent of the technology in the Skylark L launch initiative will be used in the systems of the Skylark XL rocket. Of course, these systems will need to be seamless.
Skyrora aims to perform its first orbital launch in 2023. Founder and CEO Volodymyr Levykin said the Skylark L rocket faced harsh weather conditions and its hardware had not been tested at low temperatures. Scientists and engineers are investigating the anomaly.
In 2019 Skyrora launched a Skylark Micro rocket that reached just under 27km…
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