Isar Aerospace Claims Success After Fiery End To Their First Flight

Our first test flight met all our expectations, achieving a great success. -Daniel Metzler, CEO and Co-founder.

On March 30th, 2025, at 7:30 a.m. Central Time, a German-made rocket lifted off from Andøya, Norway. The rocket, dubbed “Spectrum,” is manufactured and operated by the German company Isar Aerospace. The first flight test validated the company’s goals, but it still fell short of reaching its intended orbit around Earth.

Isar Aerospace And The European Space Race

Isar Aerospace is an aerospace company founded in 2018 near Munich, Germany. The company received a lot of money from various investors and aerospace engineering groups. In April 2021, Isar signed a contract with the Andøya Space Center (also known as the Andøya rocket range or Andøya Space) to lease a launch pad. The 20-year deal will allow the company to launch its Spectrum launch vehicle. In July 2022, Isar Aerospace announced that the French space agency, the CNES (National Centre for Space Studies), selected the startup to be the first private company to launch from the Guiana Space Centre, in French Guiana. The company will use the launchpad formerly used by the Diamant series of rockets in the 60s and 70s. The company is one of the more promising investments in the new European space race. The European Space Agency (ESA) is funding multiple private companies to gain access to space entirely independently from other nations. In January 2022, the company won the European Commission's European Innovation Council (EIC) Horizon Prize "Low-Cost Space Launch", which included a grant of 10 million Euros. Other companies that are progressing steadily are Spain’s PLD Space and the German Rocket Factory Augsburg, which was founded in 2018.

The Spectrum Launch Vehicle

Development of the Spectrum commenced during the early 2010s. Much of its design has been done in-house – a key manufacturing trick to reduce costs. Isar Aerospace has a published target cost of $11,700/kg, and they aim to make the rocket as flexible as possible to support as many different customers as possible. Isar Aerospace has arranged terms to conduct Spectrum launches from both the Andøya Spaceport in Norway and the Guiana Space Centre in French Guiana. Early customers for the launcher include Airbus Defence and Space, the German Aerospace Center (DLR), and Spaceflight, Inc. Spectrum is a two-stage launch vehicle designed to carry small-to-medium satellites weighing up to 1,000kg or roughly one ton. The rocket is powered by a total of ten Aquila engines, also manufactured in-house. The rocket utilizes 9 of these engines on its first stage to lift off the ground, and an additional Aquila engine on its second stage that uses a better optimized design for the conditions of space. In March 2023, Isar Aerospace claimed to have performed 124 hotfires of the Aquila engine in 2022, these test runs having been performed in Esrange, Sweden. Most notably, they claim to have fired the same engine on six separate occasions successfully with little to no refurbishment between firings, lending the engine to future use in a reusable rocket system.

Liftoff Of Spectrum

Launch 1: Going Full Spectrum

Spectrum’s first launch attempt was planned for between March 20th, when Isar Aerospace announced that Norwegian regulators had granted the company a launch license, through the end of the month. Several tests were performed on the pad leading up to the launch attempt on March 30th. During the countdown, the company’s mission control had zero issues leading up to launch. They had no countdown holds, aborts, or delays; something impressive on a new system where unknown processes might occur. At 12:30 PM local time (7:30 AM CST), Spectrum lit all 9 of its Aquila engines, powered by liquid propane and liquid oxygen, powering the vehicle with 150,000 pounds of thrust. The launch pad released its clamps, and it began to rise from the ground. The first signs of trouble began about fifteen seconds into flight, with the rocket visibly wobbling and its engines swiveling erratically, trying to keep it pointed the correct way. After this struggle, the flight was terminated (in this case, not with explosives but instead by shutting down the engines and letting it fall back to Earth) after the rocket was completely horizontal about thirty seconds into its flight. By around forty seconds, the rocket made impact with the sea about a hundred meters away from the launch site, thankfully not falling on top of the site.

Success Or Not?

Of course, most would look at the mushroom cloud rising above the arctic landscape and assume that it would be marked as a complete failure – but that isn’t always the case. Daniel Metzler, Isar's co-founder and CEO, wrote on Twitter early Monday: "Can't beat flight testing. Ploughing through lots of data now." Even though the rocket was targeting a polar orbit around Earth, both Isar Aerospace and Norwegian officials knew that it was a very low chance of actually reaching that orbit. Rocketry is hard, and it is exceedingly rare that a rocket works on its first attempt. The company had stated before the launch that they wanted to get off the pad, clear the pad, and get at least thirty seconds into flight. By their metric, all these goals were checked off, and they now have a tremendous amount of data to sift through to better understand the performance of their vehicle and if any changes are required. While the first orbital launch attempt from Western Europe did end prematurely, it is important to remember that nobody was hurt and no property was damaged; it wasn’t even carrying any satellites. It was a good test flight; the vehicle lifted off cleanly, and then an anomaly occurred that ended the test. "Our first test flight met all our expectations, achieving a great success," Metzler said in a press release. "We demonstrated that we can not only design and build but also launch rockets. I could not be prouder of our entire team for working so hard over the past seven years to reach this important milestone. We can only wish the best for the company's future attempts. Various videos of the launch can be found here.