Rocket Factory Augsburg (RFA) has delivered the first and second stages of its RFA ONE launch vehicle to SaxaVord Spaceport in Scotland as the company prepares for a planned test flight later this year.<\/p>\n
The German launch provider said the first stage was recently built and tested at its facilities in Augsburg, Germany, before being transported to SaxaVord in February 2026. The stage will undergo further integration at the site, including installation of its nine Helix engines, which are currently being tested in Sweden and will be delivered to the spaceport gradually.<\/p>\n
The second stage was transported to Scotland after completing a successful hot-fire test at the Esrange Space Center in Sweden. According to the company, the stage has now arrived at SaxaVord and is undergoing final checks ahead of the planned launch campaign.<\/p>\n
The development marks a step forward for the United Kingdom\u2019s emerging orbital launch market, which has faced several setbacks in recent years. In February, U.K.-based launch startup Orbex announced it had entered administration after efforts to secure new funding and potential mergers or acquisitions failed.<\/p>\n
RFA had originally planned to launch from SaxaVord in August 2024, but the schedule was delayed after an engine exploded during a hot-fire test prior to launch preparations.<\/p>\n
Dr. Stefan Brieschenk, Chief Development Officer at Rocket Factory Augsburg, said the company had carried out extensive reviews and testing following the earlier incident.<\/p>\n
\u201cFollowing the incident in 2024, we thoroughly reviewed, analyzed, and tested everything and improved the systems to achieve even greater reliability. The arrival of our first and second stages at the SaxaVord spaceport is proof of our team\u2019s commitment and expertise,\u201d he said.<\/p><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Rocket Factory Augsburg (RFA) has delivered the first and second stages of its RFA ONE launch vehicle to SaxaVord Spaceport in Scotland as the company prepares for a planned test flight later this year. The German launch provider said the first stage was recently built and tested at its facilities in Augsburg, Germany, before being […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":20380,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[244,1616,6732,6200,4619,6733,1618,6734,6735,1620],"class_list":["post-20379","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-europe","tag-orbex","tag-rfa-one","tag-rocket-development","tag-rocket-factory-augsburg","tag-saxavord-spaceport","tag-scotland","tag-space-launch-industry","tag-stefan-brieschenk","tag-united-kingdom"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20379"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=20379"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/20379\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/20380"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=20379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=20379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=20379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}