{"id":421689,"date":"2026-02-12T11:28:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-12T11:28:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/421689\/"},"modified":"2026-02-12T11:28:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-12T11:28:07","slug":"rocket-maker-could-buy-orbex-assets-including-tongue-spaceport","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/421689\/","title":{"rendered":"Rocket maker could buy Orbex assets including Tongue spaceport"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The company, which has a manufacturing facility in Cumbernauld, said its move would ensure Orbex technology and the spaceport remained under UK ownership.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">It also said its bid would safeguard products that had received public funding.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Chief operating officer Dr Jack-James Marlow said Skyrora was committed to providing &#8220;reliable, independent&#8221; access to space.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Skyrora designs and builds rockets to carry small satellites into space.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/news\/uk-scotland-highlands-islands-52740857\" class=\"ssrcss-1e0jzsh-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">In May 2020<\/a>, it carried out the UK&#8217;s first complete ground rocket test in 50 years.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The 36ft (11m) tall Skylark-L rocket was tested at Kildermorie Estate, near Alness, in the Highlands.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The rocket performed all the actions of a launch while restrained to the ground to prevent it from taking off.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Orbex has been planning the first launch of its Prime rocket later this year at SaxaVord Spaceport in Shetland, with the prospect of becoming a commercial launch vehicle for satellites.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The company, which has a manufacturing facility in Cumbernauld, said its move would ensure Orbex technology and the&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":421690,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[90,416,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-421689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-space","tag-science","tag-space","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421689","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=421689"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/421689\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/421690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=421689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=421689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=421689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}