Isar Aerospace set for second launch of Spectrum rocket
Isar Aerospace announced a scrub of the “Onward and Upward” flight, the second launch attempt of its Spectrum small‑satellite launcher, on Wednesday, 25 March 2026. The mission was slated to lift off from the Orbital Launch Pad at Andøya Spaceport in Norway at 20:00 UTC, later shifted to 20:21 UTC after a range violation involving a boat. Countdown progressed to T‑3 seconds before engine ignition was halted and controllers called a full abort. No replacement launch window has been set, and the company cited rising propellant temperatures caused by the extended range clearance as the immediate issue.
The 28‑metre‑tall, two‑metre‑diameter Spectrum vehicle employs nine first‑stage Aquila engines that burn propane and liquid oxygen, with a single vacuum‑optimized Aquila engine on the second stage using the same propellants. Propane provides a higher specific impulse than many carbon‑based fuels, and the upper stage is capable of multiple in‑flight restarts, removing the need for a separate kick stage. Integrated static‑fire tests of both stages were completed in late 2025, and the rocket can deliver up to 700 kg to a Sun‑synchronous orbit from Andøya or 1 000 kg to low‑Earth orbit from Kourou, French Guiana. The payload for this flight consists of five university cubesats—CybeeSat (TU Berlin), FramSat‑1 (NTNU), TriSat‑S (University of Maribor), SpaceTeamSat‑1 (TU Vienna)—and an experimental platform from EnduroSat, with deployment hardware supplied by Exolaunch. The mission will also test the pitch‑over maneuver, stage separation, second‑stage performance, and fairing release, all of which failed or were not exercised on the inaugural flight.
The first Spectrum flight on 30 March 2025 terminated 30 seconds after liftoff when a vent valve opened during the pitch‑over maneuver, causing loss of attitude control and a flight‑termination command. Subsequent software upgrades and increased performance margins were applied to address the failure. Isar Aerospace now holds two launch service agreements with the European Space Agency for the CASSINI and “Tom and Jerry” missions under the Flight Ticket Initiative, a pending 2028 dedicated launch for U.S. provider SEOPS, and a Norwegian Space Agency contract for two Arctic‑surveillance satellites. These contracts, together with the upcoming Redwire Sigma YNDEO‑3 flight, position Spectrum to compete with Rocket Lab’s Electron and Firefly’s Alpha in the higher‑end small‑satellite market and to provide independent European access to orbit.
