Spaceport Industry - 2022 Year in Review
By Izzy House
The roar of the 2020s comes from the sound of launches into space. Space stations, satellites, Moon voyages, and suborbital transportation herald in this new era. Spaceports connect our world and are vital infrastructure for space transportation.
They are the gateway to space. Here is a brief look into recent events in the past year that heralded a new era for the space industry.
January 10 – 7th Annual Global Spaceport Alliance Membership Caucus was held in Orlando, Florida.
February 16 – The 24th Annual Federal Aviation Administration Commercial Space Transportation Conference was held in Washington D.C.
April 19 – The Spaceport Maine steps closer as Maine’s Governor Janet Mills signed the bill into law creating a public-private partnership that would build launch sites, data networks, and operations to send satellites into space.
May 12 – Axiom Space breaks ground at Houston Spaceport on its new 400,000-square-foot headquarters on 22 acres.
May 13 – The Huntsville-Madison County Airport Authority was issued a license to operate a reentry site, which will support potential landings of the Sierra Space Dream Chaser.
June 10 – Kennedy Space Center celebrated its 60th anniversary.
June 21 – 4th Annual Spaceport America Cup 2022 – 149 teams from 22 different countries competed during the five-day event.
June 27 – NASA launches its first rocket from a non-U.S. spaceport. The rocket took off from the Arnhem Space Centre in Australia’s Northern Territory.
July 20 – Global Spaceport Alliance organized a session on “The Advent of Point-to-Point Space Travel” which was held at the Farnborough International Airshow.
August 31 – Collins Aerospace inaugurated a new, 120,000-square-foot facility located at the Houston Spaceport.
September 9 – Maritime Launch Services breaks ground on Canada’s first orbital launch site for a spaceport in Nova Scotia.
October 12 – The Norwegian government approved the building of a new spaceport on Andøya.
November 15 – Space Perspective unveiled MS Voyager– the world’s first Marine Spaceport (MS) for human spaceflight, and the first in a planned fleet of this new class of spaceports globally.
November 16 – Spaceport Cornwall awarded a license to host UK’s first space launch.
November 16 – Artemis I launch from Launch Complex 39B from Kennedy Space Center in Florida. The mission duration was 25 days, 10 hours, 53 minutes with a total distance traveled of 1.3 million miles.
December 8-9 – Global Spaceport Alliance co-chaired the fifth High-Speed Aerospace Transportation Workshop in Midland, Texas
December 15 – The Virginia Commercial Space Flight Authority was issued an updated license to operate a launch site at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport.
December 17 – Federal Aviation Administration clears Rocket Lab for first launch from Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport on Wallops Island, Virginia.
December 19 – Israeli Spaceport was announced.
December 22 – The government acquired over 80% of land for India’s second spaceport in Tamil Nadu.
December 22 – Announced ribbon cutting for Spaceport Esrange in Sweden. After years of preparation and construction, the European mainland’s first orbital launch complex, Spaceport Esrange, will be inaugurated on January 13, 2023.
December 22 – Virgin Orbit receives U.K.’s first orbital launch license to launch from Spaceport Cornwall in early 2023.
Worth a mention:
Sierra Space’s Dream Chaser plane is planned to launch on the United Launch Alliance (ULA)’s new Vulcan rocket in 2023 and bring cargo to the International Space Station National Laboratory Station. With the addition of New Mexico’s Spaceport America, Sierra Space now has potential runways to utilize at the Kennedy Space Center, as well as locations in Huntsville, Alabama; the Oita Airport in Japan; and Spaceport Cornwall in the United Kingdom.
Infographic
To see a larger version of the infographic, click HERE.
Article was originally posted on LinkedIn.
