KIRUNA, Sweden (AP) \u2014 Deep in the Swedish forest, where reindeer roam and scientists ski in winter, lies one of Europe’s hopes for a spaceport that can ultimately compete with the United States, China and Russia. <\/p>\n
For decades, Europe has relied upon the U.S. for its security among the stars. But the Trump administration\u2019s \u201cAmerica First\u201d policies, plus a commercial market that\u2019s growing exponentially, has prompted Europeans to rethink their approach. <\/p>\n
The state-owned Esrange Space Center in Kiruna, Sweden, is among the sites building out orbital rocket programs to allow Europe to advance in the global space race and launch satellites from the continent’s mainland. <\/p>\n
\u201cThe gap is significant,” said Hermann Ludwig Moeller, director of the European Space Policy Institute. \u201cI would argue that Europe, to be anywhere relevant in the next five to 10 years, needs to at least double its investment in space. And saying that it would double doesn\u2019t mean that it would catch up by the same factor, because you can expect that other regions will also continue to step up.\u201d <\/p>\n
Currently, Europe’s only space base capable of launching rockets and satellites into orbit is in sparsely populated French Guiana, an overseas department of France in South America that’s roughly 500 kilometers (310 miles) north of the equator. Otherwise, Europe borrows NASA’s Cape Canaveral in Florida. <\/p>\n
In March, Isar Aerospace<\/a> launched the first test flight of its orbital launch vehicle<\/a> from the And\u00f8ya Spaceport, another site that’s part of Europe’s efforts to expand its presence in space, on an island in northern Norway<\/a>. <\/p>\n While the rocket crashed into the sea 30 seconds after liftoff<\/a>, the private German aerospace company had largely ruled out the possibility of the rocket reaching orbit on its first complete flight and deemed the short journey a success. <\/p>\n Moeller believes a successful orbital launch from continental Europe could occur within the next year, though he won’t guess where. <\/p>\n Portugal, Spain, Italy, Germany and the United Kingdom also are among the countries seeking to be part of Europe’s spaceport portfolio. <\/p>\n Elsewhere on Earth, India \u2014 active in space research since the 1960s \u2014 has launched satellites for itself and other countries and successfully put one in orbit around Mars in 2014. After a failed attempt to land on the moon in 2019, India became the first country to land a spacecraft<\/a> near the moon\u2019s south pole in 2023 in a historic voyage to uncharted territory that scientists believe could hold reserves of frozen water. The mission was dubbed a technological triumph for the world\u2019s most populous nation. <\/p>\n New Zealand<\/a> also has a growing and active launch industry, and Australia is working to develop its commercial space industry. <\/p>\n Esrange and And\u00f8ya date back to the 1960s and much of their space-bound appeal stems from their far-north geography on Earth. <\/p>\n Esrange, for example, is owned and operated by the Swedish Space Corporation and based more than 200 kilometers (120 miles) north of the Arctic Circle. The space center’s 30-plus antennas can more easily communicate with satellites orbiting the North Pole compared to infrastructure that\u2019s near the equator. <\/p>\n Most important, perhaps, is its size. The base itself encompasses 6 square kilometers (2.3 square miles), where experts conduct Martian lander parachute tests, suborbital rocket launches and stratospheric balloon experiments. <\/p>\n But its key selling point is Esrange’s rocket landing zone: 5,200 square kilometers (2,000 square miles) of birch, pine and spruce trees spread north across the Swedish tundra, nearly to the Norwegian and Finnish borders. <\/p>\n The territory is uninhabited besides the Sami Indigenous reindeer herders who sometimes pass through, and the space center alerts them before any tests occur. The emptiness of the landscape allows scientists to launch and easily recover material for further study. <\/p>\n \u201cThe rocket motor will just fall freely into the ground, which means that you need to see to it that no people are in the area,\u201d Mattias Abrahamsson, business development director for the science division at Esrange, said during a recent tour. \u201cWe have to see to it that it’s not more dangerous to be in that area, if you want to pick berries or hunt or fish or anything like that, than if you’re in a street in New York or in Stockholm or anywhere.\u201d <\/p>\n And\u00f8ya’s remote location on a Norwegian island, meanwhile, means rockets can safely crash down into the sea without risking harm to humans. <\/p>\n During his first week in office earlier this year, U.S. President Donald Trump announced his $175 billion \u201cGolden Dome\u201d missile defense system<\/a> to protect America from long-range missiles.<\/a> <\/p>\n If successful, it would mark the first time the U.S. would place weapons in space<\/a> that are meant to destroy ground-based missiles within seconds of launch. It follows China\u2019s 2021 groundbreaking launch of a warhead system that went into orbit before reentering Earth\u2019s atmosphere. <\/p>\n