Spaceport Sweden is a company that plans to make

Kiruna (; se, Giron ; fi, Kiiruna ) is the northernmost Stad (Sweden), city in Sweden, situated in the province of Lapland, Sweden, Lapland. It had 17,002 inhabitants in 2016 and is the seat of Kiruna Municipality (population: 23,167 in 2016) in Norr ...

the primary European

Spaceport A spaceport or cosmodrome is a site for launching or receiving spacecraft, by analogy to a seaport for ships or an airport for aircraft. The word ''spaceport'', and even more so ''cosmodrome'', has traditionally been used for sites capable ...

for personal

suborbital spaceflight A sub-orbital spaceflight is a spaceflight in which the spacecraft reaches outer space, but its trajectory intersects the atmosphere or surface of the gravitating body from which it was launched, so that it will not complete one orbital re ...

for

space tourism Space tourism is human space travel for recreational purposes. There are several different types of space tourism, including orbital, suborbital and lunar space tourism. During the period from 2001 to 2009, seven space tourists made eight s ...

, research, education, and a hub for cross-industry innovation. Spaceport Sweden is built by the Swedish Space Corporation. Located in Kiruna, in

Swedish Lapland Lapland, also known by its Swedish name Lappland (, fi, Lappi, la, Lapponia), is a province in northernmost Sweden. It borders Jämtland, Ångermanland, Västerbotten, Norrbotten, Norway and Finland. Nearly a quarter of Sweden's land area ...

, Spaceport Sweden is being developed at

Kiruna Airport Kiruna Airport is the northernmost airport in Sweden. It lies around 10 km (6.2 mi) from the town centre of Kiruna. In 2018, the airport served 277,018 passengers. Future Kiruna Airport is the chosen destination for the Spaceport Swe ...

which will be a hybrid for air and space travel as well as for learning adventures, education and research. Swedish Minister for Enterprise and Communication

Maud Olofsson Maud Elisabeth Olofsson (born ''Olsson'', 9 August 1955) is a former Swedish politician who was the leader of the Swedish Centre Party from 2001 to 2011, Minister for Enterprise and Energy from 2006 to 2011 and Deputy Prime Minister of Sweden ...

inaugurated the project as a national initiative in 2007. The current

CEO A chief executive officer (CEO), also known as a central executive officer (CEO), chief administrator officer (CAO) or just chief executive (CE), is one of a number of corporate executives charged with the management of an organization especially ...

of the spaceport is Karin Nilsdotter.

History

The official

inauguration In government and politics, inauguration is the process of swearing a person into office and thus making that person the incumbent. Such an inauguration commonly occurs through a formal ceremony or special event, which may also include an inaugu ...

of the company was made on 26 January 2007 and the company started off by signing an agreement with

Virgin Galactic Virgin Galactic is an American spaceflight company founded by Richard Branson and his British Virgin Group retains an 11.9% stake through Virgin Investments Limited. It is headquartered in California, and operates from New Mexico. The company i ...

. The agreement stated that the two would be working together towards an operational agreement whereby Spaceport Sweden would be the first spaceport outside the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

which Virgin Galactic could use for flight campaigns. On 3 April 2008, a press conference was held in Kiruna, and a number of astronauts in training were presented to the press, but details of an agreement, if any, were not released. In February 2012, Spaceport Sweden hoped to have operational flights of

SpaceShipTwo The Scaled Composites Model 339 SpaceShipTwo (SS2) is an air-launched suborbital spaceplane type designed for space tourism. It is manufactured by The Spaceship Company, a California-based company owned by Virgin Galactic. SpaceShipTwo is car ...

by 2015. In 2012, Spaceport Sweden launched an initiative to offer learning adventures and spaceflight preparation providing the opportunity to explore more about the aurora borealis through northern light flights in Kiruna. Further, in collaboration with QinetiQ, a 2-day spaceflight preparation program is provided using a long-arm centrifuge and hypobaric chamber to simulate and prepare for the upcoming spaceflights. In 2013, Spaceport Sweden initiated a limited offering of weightless flight experiences, in collaboration with AirZeroG and Novespace in France, to

private Private or privates may refer to: Music * " In Private", by Dusty Springfield from the 1990 album ''Reputation'' * Private (band), a Denmark-based band * "Private" (Ryōko Hirosue song), from the 1999 album ''Private'', written and also recorde ...

individuals using a specially outfitted

Airbus A300 The Airbus A300 is a wide-body airliner developed and manufactured by Airbus. In September 1967, aircraft manufacturers in the United Kingdom, France, and West Germany signed a memorandum of understanding to develop a large airliner. West ...

capable of simulating a short-duration

zero-gravity Weightlessness is the complete or near-complete absence of the sensation of weight. It is also termed zero gravity, zero G-force, or zero-G. Weight is a measurement of the force on an object at rest in a relatively strong gravitational fi ...

environment. In 2015 Spaceport Sweden won a Kiruna Lapland Award for the efforts to establish

commercial spaceflight Private spaceflight is spaceflight or the development of spaceflight technology that is conducted and paid for by an entity other than a government agency. In the early decades of the Space Age, the government space agencies of the Soviet Unio ...

, in

Notes

External links

* {{Spaceport

Sweden Sweden, formally the Kingdom of Sweden,The United Nations Group of Experts on Geographical Names states that the country's formal name is the Kingdom of SwedenUNGEGN World Geographical Names, Sweden./ref> is a Nordic country located on ...

Kiruna Scaled Composites Virgin Galactic Swedish companies established in 2007

History

See also

Notes

External links