Skyrora Ltd is a private space company based in the

United Kingdom The United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, commonly known as the United Kingdom (UK) or Britain, is a country in Europe, off the north-western coast of the European mainland, continental mainland. It comprises England, Scotlan ...

since 2017. The company specialises in the

design A design is a plan or specification for the construction of an object or system or for the implementation of an activity or process or the result of that plan or specification in the form of a prototype, product, or process. The verb ''to design' ...

and manufacture of modular disassemblable

rocket A rocket (from it, rocchetto, , bobbin/spool) is a vehicle that uses jet propulsion to accelerate without using the surrounding air. A rocket engine produces thrust by reaction to exhaust expelled at high speed. Rocket engines work entirely fr ...

launch vehicle A launch vehicle or carrier rocket is a rocket designed to carry a payload ( spacecraft or satellites) from the Earth's surface to outer space. Most launch vehicles operate from a launch pads, supported by a launch control center and ...

s, specifically for the launch of small

satellite A satellite or artificial satellite is an object intentionally placed into orbit in outer space. Except for passive satellites, most satellites have an electricity generation system for equipment on board, such as solar panels or radioi ...

s, and portable launch systems, using

eco-friendly Environment friendly processes, or environmental-friendly processes (also referred to as eco-friendly, nature-friendly, and green), are sustainability and marketing terms referring to goods and services, laws, guidelines and policies that clai ...

technologies such as the fuel known as ''Ecosene'' and the ''Skyrora Space Tug''. Skyrora is headquartered in

Edinburgh Edinburgh ( ; gd, Dùn Èideann ) is the capital city of Scotland and one of its 32 council areas. Historically part of the county of Midlothian (interchangeably Edinburghshire before 1921), it is located in Lothian on the southern shore of t ...

. The Skyrora CEO and founder is Volodymyr Levykin, previously the COO of an AIM-listed online dating company Cupid plc. British astronaut

Tim Peake Major Timothy Nigel Peake (born 7 April 1972) is a British Army Air Corps officer, European Space Agency astronaut and a former International Space Station (ISS) crew member. He is the first British ESA astronaut, the second astronaut to b ...

is a

board member A board of directors (commonly referred simply as the board) is an executive committee that jointly supervises the activities of an organization, which can be either a for-profit or a nonprofit organization such as a business, nonprofit organiz ...

at Skyrora together with Nick Laird, and Baroness Susan Greenfield.

Overview

In May 2020, Skyrora held a successful static fire test of the Skylark L vehicle at a mobile launch site on Kildermorie Estate in Ross-shire. In August 2018, Skyrora successfully conducted Scotland's first commercial rocket launch by a private company at Kildermorie Estate in

Ross-shire Ross-shire (; gd, Siorrachd Rois) is a historic county in the Scottish Highlands. The county borders Sutherland to the north and Inverness-shire to the south, as well as having a complex border with Cromartyshire – a county consisting o ...

. The company launched the 1.3-metre-tall Skylark Nano rocket using an M class model rocketry motor in August 2018 and the 2-metre-tall Skylark Nano II rocket using a Cesaroni M-1520BS model rocketry motor in July 2019. The rockets are all built and assembled in the

. In April 2021, Skyrora received €3 million of co-funding from the European Space Agency (ESA).

Rockets

Skylark Nano

The Skylark Nano was launched in 2020 as an unguided supersonic rocket designed for simulating a launch to then be recovered with the use of parachutes. Neither a control system nor a thrust vector control system is required. It has been launched three times as part of Skyrora's de-risking programme in the

Scottish Highlands The Highlands ( sco, the Hielands; gd, a’ Ghàidhealtachd , 'the place of the Gaels') is a historical region of Scotland. Culturally, the Highlands and the Lowlands diverged from the Late Middle Ages into the modern period, when Lowland S ...

. Following launches in 2018 and 2019, the rocket has reached an altitude of 6 km during the most recent test in Shetland.

Skylark Micro

The Skylark Micro is a two-stage supersonic rocket designed as an intermediate step between Skylark Nano and Skylark L. It made the flight in August 2020, reaching an altitude of 27 km.

Skylark L

The Skylark L suborbital launch vehicle is the first Skyrora rocket to use a

3D printed 3D printing or additive manufacturing is the construction of a three-dimensional object from a CAD model or a digital 3D model. It can be done in a variety of processes in which material is deposited, joined or solidified under computer co ...

hydrogen peroxide–kerosene

engine An engine or motor is a machine designed to convert one or more forms of energy into mechanical energy. Available energy sources include potential energy (e.g. energy of the Earth's gravitational field as exploited in hydroelectric power ...

. It is capable of fulfilling scientific micro-gravity needs. Skylark L was developed to launch 60 kg of payload 100 km up. This rocket was subject to a full static fire test in May 2020 at the Kildermorie Estate in

Alness Alness (, ; gd, Alanais) is a town and civil parish in Ross and Cromarty, Scotland. It lies near the mouth of the River Averon, near the Cromarty Firth, with the town of Invergordon 3 miles (5 km) to the east, and the village of Evanton ...

, Scotland, which was the first ground rocket test in Scotland in 50 years. On 8 October 2022 the Skylark L rocket attempted a suborbital test flight mission from

Langanes Langanes () is a peninsula in northeast Iceland. The name literally means "long peninsula". It is long from southwest to northeast, ending in a thin strip of land called Fontur (regionally also ) where there is also a suggestive lighthouse calle ...

(

Iceland Iceland ( is, Ísland; ) is a Nordic island country in the North Atlantic Ocean and in the Arctic Ocean. Iceland is the most sparsely populated country in Europe. Iceland's capital and largest city is Reykjavík, which (along with its s ...

) launch site. Intended apogee was . The vehicle experienced an anomaly shortly after lift-off, landing in the sea 500 m from the pad.

Skyrora XL

The Skyrora XL is a three-stage orbital launch vehicle under

development Development or developing may refer to: Arts *Development hell, when a project is stuck in development *Filmmaking, development phase, including finance and budgeting *Development (music), the process thematic material is reshaped * Photograph ...

with nine hydrogen peroxide–kerosene engines of the same type used in Skylark L. The first flight will take place no earlier than 2023. It is expected that the rocket will be able to bring a payload of 315 kg to a 500 km orbit. Skyrora has successfully tested a final stage rocket engine in its first stationary ground-firings. In April 2021, the company successfully tested the upper stage of the Skyrora XL rocket and completed a static fire test in its engine development complex in Fife. Hot-fire tests of the first stage are scheduled to take place in mid-2023. In October 2021 the company made a multi-launch agreement with

SaxaVord Spaceport SaxaVord Spaceport, previously known as Shetland Space Centre, is a planned spaceport to be located on the Lamba Ness peninsula on Unst, the most northerly of the Shetland Islands. The proposed site is near the RAF Saxa Vord radar station and t ...

to launch the Skyrora XL from that location. Skyrora also has an agreement with the canadian launch provider

Maritime Launch Services Maritime Launch Services (MLS) is a Canadian space transport services company founded in 2016 and headquartered in Nova Scotia, Canada. MLS will rely on Ukrainian Cyclone-4M rockets by Pivdenne to launch polar and sun synchronous orbit from Canso ...

to launch Skyrora XL from Spaceport Nova Scotia.

Engines

The company has successfully tested several types of engines in 2020 and 2021: * Skylark L Engine, a three-tonne regeneratively cooled bi-liquid rocket engine with a pressure fed system capable of generating 30 kN thrust. * Skyforce-2, a seven-tonne engine for the first and second stage of the orbital Skyrora XL launch vehicle that uses what Skyrora refers to as "advanced

turbopump A turbopump is a propellant pump with two main components: a rotodynamic pump and a driving gas turbine, usually both mounted on the same shaft, or sometimes geared together. They were initially developed in Germany in the early 1940s. The purpo ...

techniques". It is capable of creating 70 kN thrust. * LEO engine for Skyrora XL running on hydrogen peroxide and kerosene and producing 3.5 kN thrust, but it has also passed the successful test with Ecosene fuel. The engine is able to re-ignite several times. * Space Tug, a vehicle that can navigate to any location in open space using its own power and perform multiple manoeuvres in space, which would be useful to remove space debris and maintain or replace satellites in

orbit In celestial mechanics, an orbit is the curved trajectory of an object such as the trajectory of a planet around a star, or of a natural satellite around a planet, or of an artificial satellite around an object or position in space such as ...

. The tug was successfully tested in December 2020 with the fully integrated setup of the engine. File:Skylark Engine 35kN.png File:Skyrora Engine XL.png File:Skyrora’s engine powering XL rocket.png File:Skyrora close uo.jpg

Achievements

In August 2018, Skyrora conducted Scotland's first commercial rocket launch by a private company at Kildermorie Estate in Ross-shire. In 2020, the company got the status of the ''Company of a Year'' in ''Aerospace & Defense'' among mid-size companies by Stevie Awards, Inc. after participating in Space Camp accelerator programmes from Seraphim Capital. In 2019, Skyrora was awarded the CleanTech award at the Go:Tech Awards 2019. In 2020, Skyrora received the Leif Erikson Lunar Prize Award for its innovative project ‘Ecosene’. In 2020, during the Aviation & Aerospace Awards 2020, Skyrora won the ‘Best Small Satellite Launch Vehicle Manufacturer Award’. In 2021, Skyrora received £2.5 million in funding from European Space Agency as a part of ESA's Boost! programme. On 30 March 2022, Skyrora won the Best Innovation in Business award from the Midlothian & East Lothian Chamber of Commerce. From the first days of the

Russian invasion of Ukraine On 24 February 2022, in a major escalation of the Russo-Ukrainian War, which began in 2014. The invasion has resulted in tens of thousands of deaths on both sides. It has caused Europe's largest refugee crisis since World War II. An ...

, Skyrora’s factory in Ukraine has remained fully functional, contributing to further progress of the company. Skyrora aims to launch its first three-stage Skyrora XL rocket from SaxaVord spaceport, which is still under construction. On May 26, 2022, Skyrora has completed a 70 kN hot-fire test for its 3D printed rocket engine, which will be used in the company’s XL launch vehicle. On March 15, 2022 Skyrora announced the opening of a new rocket engine testing facility in Midlothian, Scotland, occupying an area of over 120,000 square feet. The site will host a team of up to 20 engineers once the testing site is running at full capacity. In June 2022, Lee Rosen, SpaceX's former vice president of mission and launch operations, joined Skyrora as a new chief operating officer. In July 2022, Skyrora opened a new manufacturing and production facility in Cumbernauld, Scotland. The site appears to be the largest of its kind in the UK. In August 2022, Skyrora submitted its application to the UK Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) to receive the licence required for commercial spaceflight activities. The launch operator licence will allow Skyrora to undertake its planned orbital launches in 2023.

Education

The company has organised a graduate placement program to help the graduates and young talents to get into the sector. They offer technical positions for students and summer internships. Skyrora has helped fund the retrieval of the first stages of Black Arrow R2 and R3 and provided sponsorship for the UKSEDS programme.

Ecological fuel

Skyrora has upgraded its kerosene made of unrecyclable waste

plastic Plastics are a wide range of synthetic or semi-synthetic materials that use polymers as a main ingredient. Their plasticity makes it possible for plastics to be moulded, extruded or pressed into solid objects of various shapes. This adaptab ...

to be used as

rocket fuel Rocket propellant is the reaction mass of a rocket. This reaction mass is ejected at the highest achievable velocity from a rocket engine to produce thrust. The energy required can either come from the propellants themselves, as with a chemical ...

– Ecosene. The new fuel is said to produce 45 percent less greenhouse gas than traditional fuel. In February 2020, Skyrora has already used the fuel to fire its LEO engine for the final stage of Skyrora XL rocket at their engine test complex. Skyrora started to use

3D printers 3D printing or additive manufacturing is the construction of a three-dimensional object from a CAD model or a digital 3D model. It can be done in a variety of processes in which material is deposited, joined or solidified under computer co ...

to manufacture various rocketry components as a sustainable methodology of production.

External links

Official website

References

{{reflist Aerospace companies of the United Kingdom Private spaceflight companies Microsatellite launch vehicles