Isar Aerospace becomes first European commercial company to reach orbit
Isar Aerospace reaches orbit and deploys payloads on second flight

On September 5, 2026, Isar Aerospace's Spectrum rocket lifted off from Andøya, Norway, on its second flight, successfully deploying payloads into orbit. This marks the first time a European commercial company has achieved orbital delivery, breaking a decades-long bottleneck in European space access. The mission, named 'Onward and Upward', carried payloads selected through the German Space Agency's Microlauncher Competition. CEO Daniel Metzler hailed the achievement as opening a new chapter for European spaceflight, with plans to scale production to 40 launch vehicles annually.
We achieved within a few years what had taken the European space industry decades before. Europe now has sovereign access to space.
- nolok
Congratulation and great news ! For Europe, but also the world, space access is one of those frontiers we can (and I believe will) see truly opened in my lifetime and I find that truly awesome.
Interestingly there still seems to be a difference in approach between "few launch, expected to go well" in europe and "many launch as trial and error" in the US, with other countries falling somewhere in between those two limits, it's often seen as a threat here of "if we don't do more more often we won't make any progress" but ignoring the economical side (and I think it's fair, given than even with massive subsidies SpaceX is not financially viable until it feed itself through Starlink) it's been a remarkable series of years for new European vehicules launch success.
Also one thing I have to point:
> Europe now has sovereign access to space.
I understand what is meant here, and of course said company need to push that forward, but French Guyana is full french territory, it's not even a foreign territory. It's part of the EU (known as the outermost region of the European Union), EU law applies, it's citizens are EU citizens, EU citizens from other countries can freely move and work and live there ... It's technicaly more EU than Norway.
But less Europe than Norway, sure. Still, on the context of "sovereign access", I would argue both side of that coin have their attributes, and for long term sovereignty I would prefer EU territory instead of "inside-europe-Belarus" for exemple.
- sajithdilshan
Congrats to Isar Aerospace. If any nation in Europe that can start a new space frontier, that would be the Germans and I hope Isar would get strong support from the Bavarian state to be a neck-on-neck competitor to SpaceX.
- consumer451
It might interest folks to learn:
> Incidentally, the early investment for Isar came from Bülent Altan, the Turkish ex-SpaceX guy who was in charge of the guidance system for Falcon-1, Falcon-9 and Dragon. [0]
It turns out that Altan was an angel investor in Isar, and then co-founded VC firm Alpine Space Ventures [1] that continued to invest in Isar, among other space ventures in Europe.
- pyrale
Their press release seems to center on:
> Europe now has sovereign access to space. [...] Customers around the world now have a sovereign launch option at their disposal.
They apparently try very hard to ignore Arianespace.
- gagan2020
There will be some chain reaction up there in near future, in our lifetime only.
Congratulation to the team.
These milestones are necessary to advancement of human race as we need new planets to occupy.
But, we needed clear path going forward. I am both pro to advancement but with caution kind of guy.
- jimnotgym
Congratulations ISAR
Edit: it should be Isar not ISAR
This is a huge achievement and every person involved should be very proud.
Please oblige me by not writing anything political in reply, let's just celebrate!
- Vishal_Max
I really like seeing new aerospace companies, and i really hope humans go interstellar by 2050
- hn9zmdcaou
The restraint here is admirable