On 24 May 2021, the UK government announced that the country will develop space launch capability. A variety of sites have been selected, throughout G

Is the UK poised to return to space launches? - BBC Future

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2022-01-15 06:30:05

On 24 May 2021, the UK government announced that the country will develop space launch capability. A variety of sites have been selected, throughout Great Britain, with launches scheduled to commence as early as Summer 2022. These will be comparatively small launch centres though; if you're imagining something as massive as Kennedy Space Center in the US, you're on the wrong track.

This is not the first time that the UK has had space launch capability, though not necessarily within the country's own borders. In the late 1960s, the UK developed the capability to launch the Black Arrow rockets from Woomera in Australia. The project was ultimately cancelled a year later, following the Ministry of Defence's decision to use America's Scout rocket instead. "We are the only nation to build a launch capability and then scrap it after the first launch," says Melissa Thorpe, head of Spaceport Cornwall.

Initially, most satellites were launched into geostationary orbit, which stays at a fixed point above the Earth. To achieve that efficiently, it is best to launch eastwards, close to the Equator, to obtain the highest possible spin rate. "[The Earth at the Equator rotates at] about 1,400ft-per-second and in Scotland it's about 800ft-per-second,” says Scott Hammond, operations director at Shetland Space Centre. If you're at the Equator, and you want to go to geostationary, that's all free energy that throws you out."