spaceport

2 Articles

Continental Europe’s First Spaceport – And It’s Above The Arctic Circle!

November 9, 2023 by 28 Comments

When we think of a space launch it’s likely our minds might turn to the lush swampland of Florida’s Cape Canaveral, or the jungle of Kourou in Guyana. These are both in the tropical regions on sites as close to the Equator as the governments who built them could find, because the higher rotational speed of the planet at its widest point gives departing rockets a bit of extra kick. Even the Soviet Baikonur cosmodrome in modern-day Kazakhstan which sits at around 45 degrees North, was chosen in part to lie in one of the more southerly Soviet republics.

It’s unexpected then to report on the opening of what may at the time of writing be the world’s newest spaceport, situated on the island of Andøya in northern Norway, at around 69 degrees North. Just what is going on?

The answer for the German company Isar Aerospace is that their launches from the site will be ideally placed not for low-inclination orbits but for polar orbits, something of a valuable commodity and a worthy point of competition when compared to equatorial sites. We have shamefacedly to admit that we’re not completely au fait with Norwegian geography, so it took us a minute to find Andøya towards the top of the country’s westward chain of islands.

The spaceport itself lies in a bay facing westward over the Norwegian Sea, and the launch platform is on a stone jetty protruding into the water. It appears to be a beautiful landscape, a suitable reward for any hardy souls who make the trip to watch a launch. Unexpectedly the spaceport stands alone in Continental Europe, though before too long it’s likely to be joined by other projects including one in northern Scotland. European skies are likely to become busier over the coming years.

Google Is Building A 100kW Radio Transmitter At A Spaceport And No One Knows Why

March 2, 2016 by 154 Comments

You can find the funniest things in public government documents. There’s always ample evidence your local congress critter is working against the interests of their constituency, nation, and industry controlled by the commission they’re chairperson of. Rarely, though, do you find something surprising, and rarer still does it portend some sort of experiments conducted by Google at a spaceport in New Mexico.

In a publication released last week, Google asked the FCC to treat some information relating to radio experiments as confidential. These experiments involve highly directional and therefore high power transmissions at 2.5 GHz, 5.8GHz, 24GHz, 71-76GHz, and 81-86GHz. These experiments will take place at Spaceport America, a 12,000 foot runway in the middle of New Mexico occasionally used by SpaceX, Virgin Galactic, and now Google.

For the most part, this document only tells the FCC that Google won’t be causing harmful interference in their radio experiments. There few other details, save for what bands and transmitters Google will be using and an experimental radio license call sign (WI9XZE) that doesn’t show up in the FCC database.

Of the few details listed in the documents, one thing does pop out as exceptionally odd: a 70-80 GHz transmitter with an effective radiated power (ERP) 96,411 W. That’s close enough to 100 kilowatts to call it as such. This is the maximum effective radiated power of the highest power FM stations in the US, but radio stations are omnidirectional, whereas Google is using very high gain antennas with a beam width of less than half a degree. The actual power output of this transmitter is a mere half watt.

The best guess for what Google is doing out in the New Mexico desert is Project Skybender, a project to use millimeter waves to bring faster Internet to everyone. There aren’t many details, but there is a lot of speculation ranging from application in low Earth orbit to something with Google Loon.