Europe Finally Gets Its Own SpaceX Challenger As Isar Reaches Orbit

At 10:12pm local time on Saturday, a 92-foot rocket built by Munich startup Isar Aerospace lifted off from a windswept island above the Arctic Circle and reached orbit,  where it deployed five small satellites into a roughly 500-km orbit on what was only its second flight, making it the first commercial European company to deliver payloads to orbit and the first successful commercial orbital launch from continental Europe. 

Readers may recall how the first attempt went. As we noted in March 2025, Spectrum's maiden flight lasted about 30 seconds before the rocket flipped over and dropped into the sea in a fireball. The post-mortem, per NASASpaceflight: a vent valve popped open at T+25 seconds during the pitch-over maneuver, the vehicle lost attitude control, and the flight termination system cut all nine engines at T+30. Isar went back to the drawing board, rewrote the software, and widened the vehicle's margins. READ MORE AT SOURCE »