Rocket engine explodes during test launch from new spaceport in Scotland

LONDON — A rocket engine exploded during a test launch at a new spaceport in the Shetland Islands off northern Scotland, the rocket manufacturer said Tuesday.

German manufacturer Rocket Factory Augsburg, or RFA, said no one was injured in the incident at SaxaVord Spaceport on the remote island of Unst on Monday evening.

Video of Monday’s test launch showed the engine exploding on the launchpad, with the entire structure engulfing in flames and thick smoke.

The spaceport recently received its licenses from the Civil Aviation Authority and is designed for small rockets delivering payloads into low earth orbit. It is billed as western Europe’s only fully-licensed vertical rocket launch port.

RFA was running tests there ahead of holding the U.K.’s first vertical rocket launch into orbit this autumn.

“The launch pad has been saved and is secured, the situation is under control and any immediate danger has been mitigated,” the company said in a statement. It is working with the spaceport and authorities to investigate what led to the explosion, RFA added.

Britain has ambitions to become Europe’s leading destination for commercial spaceflight activities. In 2022 a separate site in Cornwall, southwest England, became the first licensed U.K. spaceport, though rockets there are launched horizontally — they are carried by an aircraft to high altitudes before a rocket engine takes over.