RFA and SaxaVord target UKs first vertical orbital launch

Date:
Fri, 11 Apr 2025 20:28:46 +0000

Description:
Rocket Factory Augsburg (RFA) is determined to debut its RFA One rocket by
the end The post RFA and SaxaVord target UKs first vertical orbital launch appeared first on NASASpaceFlight.com .

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Rocket Factory Augsburg (RFA) is determined to debut its RFA One rocket by
the end of this year. Applying industrialization techniques to building low-cost, high-performance rockets, the flight could become the first
vertical orbital launch from UK soil.

Progress on two further pads is underway at the SaxaVord spaceport, as the
two organizations count down together to a historic maiden launch. NSF caught up with RFAs chief operating officer, Stefan Brieschenk, and SaxaVords COO, Debbie Strang, to discuss how the collaboration will help to drive Europes future in space.



RFAs Stefan Brieschenk believes there are no affordable small rockets and that if his company can industrialize the process and lower the cost then
most customers will choose them over larger vehicles.

As SpaceX and MaiaSpace have also concluded, stainless steel emerged as the logical choice of material. While other companies have settled on carbon composites or high-strength aluminum lithium alloys which can afford a sleeker-looking vehicle, stainless steel allows low-cost structures to be constructed capitalizing on existing processes. The result is a vehicle that is optimized for cost yet with a significant payload capacity.



RFAs stages are built by an existing industry that already builds similar tanks in large numbers for breweries and food processing. If you make stainless tanks in this sort of design with roughly one to two mm
[thickness], you end up with ridiculously low costs because its fully industrialized, Brieschenk told NSF. A low cost of payload to orbit is achieved through a combination of really efficient motors that dont need
boost pumps, and inexpensive structures that can withstand slightly higher pressures and make up for the boost pumps on the stage combustion engine.

The current model is the result of some ingenious data modeling, coding, and calculations which Brieschenk refers to as the companys mathematical Optimizer. This tool allowed the team to review some unique combinations of these steel structures and staged combustion engines. The use of staged combustion engines removes the need for boost or pre-pumps on those engines, reducing cost and mass.

The tool analyses trajectories, structure sizes, thicknesses, and different configurations, against a huge cost database. In short, it enabled them to determine the simplest way to build a rocket that maximizes payload while reducing cost. We iterated literally millions of different combinations and this is basically the winner, he adds. Diagram of the RFA One vehicles stages (Credit: RFA)

RFA One

The three-stage RFA One is at the threshold of small and medium rockets, standing 30 m high and 2 m in diameter. The finished vehicle will deliver around 1,300 kg to sun-synchronous orbit (SSO), though the initial version
or minimum viable product is a little shorter with less propellant and is instead capable of placing roughly 500 kg of payload into SSO.

The companys own Redshift orbital transfer vehicle (OTV) will serve as an upper stage, placing payloads precisely into one or more designated orbits. RFAs longer-term vision has the OTV potentially remaining in orbit to carry out scientific missions or technical demonstrations when its primary work is done. Eventually, at the end of its life, Redshift might even be used to identify and deorbit items of space debris, thus removing rather than adding to space junk with every mission.

The company is also planning the recovery of the rockets first stage in the future , but RFA is remaining tight-lipped about the details and will concentrate first on getting to orbit. We put a lot of different talent on
the topic of how to recover and, independently, some really smart brains that we employ came to the same conclusion. I cant spill the beans on how were doing it but its going to be super exciting.

Significantly, RFAs Helix engine is Europes first staged-combustion cycle engine designed for a rocket the earlier German P111 having been built to power fighter jets. Its about fuel efficiency in a rocket engine producing
as much thrust as possible for the lowest amount of fuel consumption, Brieschenk explains. The engine is the largest that RFA could make simply
with existing processes, many of which come from the automotive industry. Cluster of nine Helix engines that propel RFA One off the launch stool (Credit: RFA)

Weighing around 200 kg, which is roughly the same as a complex car engine,
the Helix consumes a lot more fuel around 30 kg per second. Burning liquid kerosene and liquid oxygen as propellant, it produces a lot more power too,
at 100 kilonewtons (equivalent to roughly half a million horsepower).

Nine engines will power the final vehicle, though only five were used on the initial test article. Theres enough margin built in to lose one of these engines right from the beginning of flight. RFAs optimizer also showed that the number of motors on the first stage is not a strong design parameter. The payload isnt impacted as much as one might assume with ten, eleven, or twelve engines, though there are some advantages of using more if you want to land the stage again. Brieschenk notes.

The second batch of motors are currently being manufactured and the company has built around 30 to date, including prototypes. The engine is by far the most industrialized aspect, he adds, but it is still difficult to build them. Helix contains roughly 3,000 parts, of which 20 to 30 are very difficult to manufacture, with multiple production steps. RFA has been mindful to focus on continual iteration during the initial development stage when prototype designs can quickly become obsolete, and not to spend on industrialization
too early. Aerial view of SaxaVord spaceport on the island of Unst (Credit: SaxaVord)

SaxaVord spaceport

RFA Ones first stage is small enough to fit on a truck, meaning it can be loaded in Augsburg and shipped by road and ferry to SaxaVord within three days. A harbor is a one-hour drive away and will enable rocket bodies up to 4 m in diameter to be shipped anywhere by sea.

The SaxaVord spaceport sits on the northernmost of a group of almost 100 islands in the north of the UK, known as the Shetland Islands. Home to a population of 650, the island of Unst is actually nearer to Norway, which
lies to its east, than mainland Scotland, some 80 km away.

While remote, Unst benefits from some established infrastructure, and
reaching the island is more straightforward than many assume. Aberdeen
Airport in northern Scotland is well connected to locations including London, and the city has an overnight ferry to mainland Shetland. From here, SaxaVord can be reached via two interconnecting ferries and a couple of hours of driving in total. RFA One static fire at SaxaVord in May, 2024 (Credit:
Rocket Factory Augsburg)

Established in 2017, the site was identified in a UK government report as the best location for launches to sun-synchronous and polar orbits. Repurposing a nearby former Royal Air Force base, the spaceport already has storage, offices, and accommodation for 120 people just five minutes away. This
enables SaxaVord to compare favorably to some other spaceports in that it has everything a launch provider could want close by.

Ordale Airfield, near Baltasound on the island, was constructed in 1968 by
the Royal Engineers and served the transportation of oil workers between Aberdeen and offshore oil rigs. The airfield, which includes a 640 m asphalt runway, has been mothballed since 1996 but SaxaVord has leased it for engine testing and ground stations. In time, it could revitalize the airfield to
help develop its space hub further.

SaxaVord is a private sector company that has benefitted from support and funding from the UK government, but it needed to be successful from day one. For the spaceport to be a viable launch location that other clients would choose, the team looked at ten years of weather data to assess the number of potential launch windows available.

Rather than just rely on UK experts, we sent the data to NASA and they said
we have almost as many launch windows as, say, Cape Canaveral. Saxavords Debbie Strang told us. We do get a lot of wind, Im not going to deny it, but sometimes it can just blow through and its gone. What we dont get is electric storms, hurricanes, or snow. Its inevitable therell be less in winter because its more uncomfortable for the whole team working out on site, but it is absolutely viable or else we wouldnt have started it.



SaxaVord will soon be able to host two different launch providers, with an integration hangar due to be complete in July. RFA has exclusive access to
the first pad, named Fredo , honoring the late son of Anders Holch Povlsen, a Danish billionaire and significant investor in the spaceport project. See
Also UK launch forum Commercial spaceflight section European spaceflight articles Click here to join L2

Two additional pads are also undergoing development, named Calum and
Elizabeth . These will allow the spaceport to launch up to 30 times per year within the current license. An additional integration hanger may also follow but the spaceport is still in the discovery phase with additional launch providers. Everyone has bespoke requirements, says Strang. Whilst we were hoping for some standardization, at the moment were not seeing a huge amount of that. We have more clients interested in coming to us than we have pads,
so its working out which pad suits which client best.

UK-based Orbex shifted its focus from Sutherland Spaceport to SaxaVord in
late 2024 and hopes to launch its Prime rocket from the spaceport in the last quarter of this year. HyImpulse also plans to launch its SL1 vehicle before the year is out. Scatsta Airport on mainland Shetland closed in 2020 but has planning permission to perform engine testing and suitable hangarage, which has enabled the company to make a start while it waits for its launch license and pad.

Another British company, Skyrora , is also waiting on a license to use the spaceport to launch its Skylark L and Skyrora XL rockets while French startup Latitude also selected SaxaVord to debut its Zephyr vehicle. In the early
days in our naivety, we imagined that some rocket launch clients would share
a pad, Strang notes. That doesnt seem to be the case they absolutely do seem to want their own but that varies and some clients might be more open. RFA intends to launch from Fredo, SaxaVords first launch pad (Credit: SaxaVord)

RFA started out with eight people in a shipping container as a makeshift launch control center but will soon benefit from a building that is being constructed for this purpose. There are no immediate plans to build landing pads for returning first stages but sustainability remains a key factor, and the spaceport is interested in opening these conversations. There are plans
to build out SaxaVord as a visitor destination in time, but for now, the
focus is on conducting the first few test launches. The spaceport remains an ongoing construction site and, while there is a well-positioned vantage point on a nearby hill overlooking the launch site, this would be inside the exclusion zone. A visitor viewing area is, nonetheless, on the broader timeline.

Launch licenses

Spaceport Cornwall received the UKs first-ever spaceport license from the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) in 2022 and SaxaVord received the UKs first vertical launch license just over a year later in December 2023. This made it the first fully licensed vertical spaceport in Western Europe. With no established rulebook to follow, the licensing process took the CAA some time to set up for SaxaVord.

To launch a satellite in the UK you need four licenses explains Strang. In addition to the one for the spaceport, you need a license for the range services to make sure the airspace, the seaspace and everything on the ground is completely clear. We have that license too, and thats unusual as far as I understand in other global spaceports the range services could be provided
by someone else but we took the decision to keep that in-house. Render of the RFA One ascending in flight (Credit: RFA)

The other two licenses are the one held by the launch provider, such as RFA, and another for the payload. Its a really complicated and, at times, long-winded process but for absolutely the right reasons, Strang emphasizes. It goes way beyond our operations they look at every aspect of the business to make sure we are able to deliver safely.

RFAs launch operator license was awarded by the CAA on January 16, 2025, and allows for a generous 10 flights per year. If we get to 10 launches Ill be
the happiest person alive, Brieschenk told NSF. In the first couple of years you will be launching a few times a year, so this is not at all a limitation. That sort of approval is much better than we were hoping for to get at such
an early stage.

RFA One anomaly

RFA could have potentially launched last year, had it not been for an anomaly during a nine-engine test firing of the first stage in August 2024. The payload fairing and the second and third stages of the rocket were all ready and had passed their own acceptance testing, leaving only the first stage to test ahead of full stack integration. Engine bay view from the 20 second hot firing of four engines at SaxaVord in May 2024 (Credit: RFA)

Its important to understand it was a qualification test Brieschenk
reiterates, We pushed the pump to the extreme edge of where it could operate, and this turbo pump is probably the most difficult thing in a rocket, especially if you have a stage combustion engine. It creates extremely high pressures close to 400 bar and if theres any friction in it that you pair
with pockets of gaseous oxygen, then its basically over. Qualification means you basically subject the stage to loads that are higher than what the stage sees in flight. This is key to making successful space hardware you always test it way harder than what you will see on flight day.

With the stage barely filled with propellant, this process exerts a lot of structural load on the stage and, unfortunately, one of the liquid oxygen turbopumps exploded, resulting in the loss of the hardware. The fire suppression system didnt kick in as quickly as it needed to, which Brieschenk cites as the biggest learning outcome from the anomaly. One of the burnt engines greets him every day he walks into the RFA building as a stark, yet motivational reminder.

The spaceport was, ironically, due to run an engine fire exercise in
September as part of its regular quarterly contingency planning but the anomaly brought this particular scenario forward by a month. Its not until
you really do it that you test it, and you find it still needs to evolve. Strang points out. Nobody was within 500 meters of the launch stall so nobody was at risk. The launch pad wasnt damaged in any way which just goes to
credit our construction team who put the concrete in. 280-second full
duration testing of the upper stage Helix vacuum engine in Augsberg June 2023 (Credit: RFA)

This happened at about 8 PM and its on the news by 10 but we were absolutely delighted with the way it was reported because the press understand this is what happens in space. Actually, its elevated SaxaVord spaceport onto the world stage but we learned a huge amount.

Although the fire quickly engulfed the pad, it was mostly fuel combusting.
The pad has predominantly a steel structure which remained undamaged. We lost very little on the launch side, adds Brieschenk, noting that, while cabling and harnessing were lost, an umbilical tower had not yet been built, for example. We actually saved a lot of money not building a separate first stage test site. We built up the pad to a point where its just good enough for a first stage test.

To its credit, RFA swiftly produced a detailed and very transparent video outlining the lessons learned from the anomaly. As a result, a number of
small tweaks have been implemented, which combine to make the vehicle more resilient. Many of these are with the flight computer software that controls
a multitude of valves and vents as the vehicle fills with propellant and presses itself. Diagram of Rocket Factory Augsburgs Redshift OTV (Credit:
RFA)

We want to make sure these operations are as bulletproof as possible and that requires a lot of coding and the system to work together autonomously. Brieschenk highlights. A lot of these systems received small tweaks to make them more robust. Overall, what we have now is a much-improved product I believe its significantly better.

RFA will soon be igniting all nine engines in a less extreme first stage
test, before progressing to its debut flight. Two more first stages are currently in production, and the first will ship from Germany in May. The design allows for engines to be integrated during the following two months in situ, while the stage sits on the pad at SaxaVord.

Theres no exact launch window set but the company expects its maiden launch between six and eight months from now. We want to fly definitely this year this is the goal, asserts Brieschenk. We want to go to orbit on this first attempt.

(Lead image: Render of the RFA One vehicle launching from SaxaVord spaceport
Credit: Rocket Factory Augsburg)



The post RFA and SaxaVord target UKs first vertical orbital launch appeared first on NASASpaceFlight.com .



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Link to news story: https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/2025/04/rfa-saxavord-interview/


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