Reaching For The Stars
A Scottish company has brought back a relic of the first space race
ONLY one country in the history of human space flight has ever developed a successful launch vehicle that could reach Earth orbit – and then abandoned the whole project. The UK!
Some 40 years on, however, numerous Scottish companies are playing a significant role in Britain’s rapidly growing space technology sector, designing and building not just new satellites but also the rockets and ground-based facilities needed to launch them.
In 2018, the UK Space Agency announced funding for a vertical launch spaceport in Sutherland, and submitted plans to the Highland council last February.
Edinburgh-based Skyrora is one such player, with a mission to become the first commercial company to successfully launch into space from a UK launch-site.
Skyrora came onto the scene in 2017 and takes inspiration from the UK’S history of space innovation. The UK’S historic attempt to develop its own satellite launch system was Black Arrow, with four launches between 1969 and 1971 from the RAAF Woomera Range Complex in Australia.
They were not all successful, but the fourth launch – which actually took place several months after the project had been cancelled by Edward Heath’s government – placed a British experimental satellite, Prospero, into low Earth orbit.
Being a multi-stage rocket, a six-metre (19.5-foot) section of this final Black Arrow crashed back to Earth in the South Australian outback, where it remained – increasingly damaged by weather and vandalism – for 48 years until the Skyrora team stepped in.
“We’re very much inspired by Black Arrow,” says Daniel Smith, director of business development at Skyrora Ltd. “Our vehicle uses the same technology as them; we’ve gone down the route of proven technology based on previous British heritage.
“We know it works; there’s no need to reinvent the wheel. Modern technology – new alloys, carbon fibre – can make our rocket lighter, cheaper and stronger.
“We owe it to Black Arrow to keep it from being vandalised,” he adds. “Last time I went there, someone had jammed a drink can into the side of it!”
“It was also a STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics) initiative for us; as a space company, we have a responsibility to inspire future generations. With the UK once again being a launch nation, it felt like a cool thing to remind people of what has gone before.”
In January 2019, this reminder of past cutting-edge engineering excellence
was brought to Scotland and
initially displayed in Penicuik, Midlothian. In the early stages of the process, Daniel admits they found little interest from organisations to take on what he feels is “quite feasibly the most important artefact linked to the UK’S space history.”
As it turned out, while Black Arrow has long enjoyed a certain “cult status” among the space community, public interest in Black Arrow took the Skyrora team by surprise.
The rocket was originally developed and tested on the Isle of Wight, but Daniel fielded exhibiting offers from across the country, including the National Museum of Scotland and the Scottish Parliament.
“Suddenly we were inundated with offers, which was great. It cost us a fortune in storage!” he says.
Of course, there was also some practical value in bringing Black Arrow back to the UK.
“At the time we had no rocket to sell,” Daniel says, “So the development team wondered what else could we do to build up interest?”
“Myself and the CEO, Vladimir Levykin, come from an IT background. We’re not space guys at all, we have this IT methodology or belief to ‘test, test, test and test’, and do things incrementally. A lot of other companies that are building small satellite launchers are just working on their main launcher, they’re working on it for two years and then they’ll be ready to test it.
“Not to say it’s better, but our approach has been to build smaller vehicles. Let’s test as much as we can. And then we move things that we know have worked into the bigger launch vehicles, until we get to that final point.
“Nevertheless, we are doing a lot of work on the ultimate vehicle,” he adds. “It’s not just that we’re launching these smaller rockets. We have to, otherwise we will lose the battle, because we’ve got competition.”
Daniel believes this incremental approach is best, not least because launching a rocket requires much more
than just engineering. “One of our rockets – a Skylark Nano – went just six kilometres high; small scale, but it was a chance for us to test insurance, and to work with the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) to clear the airspace. We had a payload on that rocket as well, so we were able to test the ‘boarding’ of a customer.”
The company aims to have payloads on all of their suborbital test vehicles, giving them more direct experience of best matching their customers’ needs.
Daniel has fond memories of the Skylark Nano launch in Invernesshire, while looking forward to Skyhy, the next rocket they hope to launch.
“It was such a good experience; people were coming along with sniffer dogs volunteering to recover the rocket after it landed! The Skyhy is a whole other ball game. It will be going up more than 100km – that has to launch from the coast.
“So we’re in talks to launch from the Western Isles, from Uist; there’s a Ministry of Defence range there that we can use for tracking telemetry.”
“So Uist” we are in talks to launch from
For most of us, talk of a “space port” is likely to inspire images of something the scale of Cape Canaveral, but Daniel believes that’s unfair.
“The problem is around the perception of a ‘space port’; if you call it a ‘launch pad’, people will perhaps realise that it doesn’t need to be that huge,” he says.
“We feel, even for Skyhy, you only need a launch pad; yes, you need somewhere to integrate the satellites, but generally it doesn’t need to be anything huge in terms of infrastructure. It doesn’t need to be Cape Canaveral.”
Understandably, in this day and age there are environmental concerns, both in terms of noise and pollutants. “Space launches go hand in hand with a responsibility, to people and the environment,” Skyrora insists.
“In line with the UK Space Bill, we take special care to ensure our engines go through rigorous testing and quality assurance stages. Moreover, we take special care to ensure our engines use green hydrogen peroxide oxidiser to minimise the impact on the Earth’s atmosphere.”