New rocket launch site in Canada for Germany's Isar Aerospace

The German space startup Isar Aerospace said on Tuesday it would build a new launch site in Canada. 

The site will be part of the Nova Scotia Spaceport on the Atlantic coast, Isar Aerospace and the Canadian company Maritime Launch Services announced.

Construction is set to begin later this year, with the first rocket scheduled to launch in 2028.

The contract has a term of 10 years, with an option to extend. Isar Aerospace is to pay $3.75 million per quarter after an initial period of two and a half years.

The firm's vice president for mission and launch operations, Alexandre Dalloneau, said that launch capacity is "one of the most consequential bottlenecks in defence and intelligence today."

"Canada is the next step in our roadmap to bring full end-to-end launch capability to sovereign nations," he said.

Isar Aerospace currently operates a launch site on the Norwegian island of Andøya, where the first test flight took place in March 2025. 

The company, based just outside Munich, has so far postponed the second launch of its Spectrum rocket - scheduled for this year - four times.

Currently, due to a lack of European capacity, European space companies largely rely on the US company SpaceX to launch their satellites into orbit.

The Spectrum rocket is designed to transport satellites into low Earth orbit, a few hundred kilometres above the Earth's surface.