First Flight of Isar Aerospace's Spectrum Rocket Lasted Just 40 Seconds

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The first flight of Isar Aerospace's Spectrum rocket didn't last long on Sunday. The booster's nine engines switched off as the rocket cartwheeled upside-down and fell a short distance from its Arctic launch pad in Norway, punctuating the abbreviated test flight with a spectacular fiery crash into the sea. If officials at Isar Aerospace were able to pick the outcome of their first test flight, it wouldn't be this. However, the result has precedent. The first launch of SpaceX's Falcon 1 rocket in 2006 ended in similar fashion. 'Today, we know twice as much about our launch system as yesterday before launch,' Daniel Metzler, Isar's co-founder and CEO, wrote on X early Monday. 'Can't beat flight testing. Ploughing through lots of data now.'

Isar Aerospace, based in Germany, is the first in a crop of new European rocket companies to attempt an orbital launch. If all went according to plan, Isar's Spectrum rocket would have arced to the north from Andoya Spaceport in Norway and reached a polar orbit. But officials knew there was only a low chance of reaching orbit on the first flight. For this reason, Isar did not fly any customer payloads on the Spectrum rocket, designed to deliver up to 2,200 pounds (1,000 kilograms) of payload mass to low-Earth orbit. Isar declared the launch a success in its public statements, but was it? Metzler, Isar's chief executive, was asked last year what he would consider a successful inaugural flight of Spectrum. 'For me, the first flight will be a success if we don't blow up the launch site,' he said at the Handelsblatt innovation conference. 'That would probably be the thing that would set us back the most in terms of technology and time.'

This tempering of expectations sounds remarkably similar to statements made by Elon Musk about SpaceX's first flight of the Starship rocket in 2023. By this measure, Isar officials can be content with Sunday's result. The company is modeling its test strategy on SpaceX's iterative development cycle, where engineers test early, make fixes, and fly again. This is in stark contrast to the way Europe has traditionally developed rockets. The alternative to Isar's approach could be to 'spend 15 years researching, doing simulations, and then getting it right the first time,' Metzler said. With the first launch of Spectrum, Isar has tested the rocket. Now, it's time to make fixes and fly again. That, Isar's leaders argue, will be the real measure of success. 'We're super happy,' Metzler said in a press call after Sunday's flight. 'It's a time for people to be proud of, and for Europe, frankly, also to be proud of.' You can watch a replay of the live launch webcast on YouTube.

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