Spaceport Sweden

Spaceport Sweden is about both establishing a spaceport infrastructure and a co-operation where different stakeholders from Kiruna’s business sector make a concentrated effort to establish Europe’s first and most inevitable place for commercial space travel for private persons.
Space tourism in Kiruna has a great potential for development and is expected to become a global billion industry. The vision of Spaceport Sweden is to become one of the most important players in this new experience industry, where all operators are dependent on a well-functioning spaceport.

The space race started over 50 years ago with the Sputnik satellite, and in the same spirit as with aero-flight over 100 years ago, we now see how an increasing number of commercial actors are stepping forward to establish traffic in space. Companies are planning for a development based on an established space infrastructure. Spaceport Sweden was inaugurated in January 2007 by Sweden’s Minister for Enterprise and Energy, Maud Olofsson. Today there is an established co-operation with Spaceport America, which will be the home base of the company Virgin Galactic. They have visited Kiruna on several occasions, and are the company that has made the greatest strides in developing carrying planes and space vehicles. Virgin alone expects to launch about 50 000 space tourists during the first ten years, starting with Spaceport America in 2012, followed by Spaceport Sweden a few years later.

Photo: Spaceport Sweden