Kiruna has been a space centre for 50 years. Over the years, the curve has pointed straight upwards. Services include everything from launching of sounding rockets and stratospheric balloons to satellite control and advanced testing of aerospace systems.
In combination with Lapland’s exotic nature and the high-quality infrastructure for tourism, the next stage of development seems inevitable. It’s time for passenger travel, and the destination is space.
“Commercial space operations are right for the times. There is a great interest from the private sector,” says Johanna Bergström-Roos, public relations manager at Spaceport Sweden in Kiruna. Spaceport Sweden aims to be Europe’s first and most obvious base for space travel for paying tourists.
An agreement is now in place between Spaceport Sweden and Virgin Galactic, which is now the market leader in the development of technology for space tourism. Virgin Galactic expects to launch the first space trip for tourists from Spaceport Sweden in 2012.
“Flight testing of WhiteKnightTwo, the carrier aircraft that will take the spacecraft SpaceShipTwo to an altitude of 15 kilometres, will begin in the autumn of 2008. Subsequently, SpaceShipTwo will ignite a rocket engine and fly to an altitude of up to 130-140 kilometres. An altitude of 100 km is the generally accepted boundary between Earth and space. During the flight, passengers will experience about 4 or 5 minutes of weightlessness while enjoying a fantastic view,” says Johanna.
About 250 passengers have already booked a space trip with Virgin Galactic at a cost of 1.4 million Swedish kronor. Last winter, about 50 of them visited Kiruna and Spaceport Sweden. “It was a very successful trip. The travellers experienced subarctic Lapland, with a visit to Icehotel, a helicopter tour to Kebnekaise’s summit, dogsledding, snowmobiling, a rocket launch at Esrange Space Center, good food and drink, and more besides. Lapland is super-exotic and comes as quite a surprise for many who have ‘seen and done everything’. It’s a fantastic complement to a space adventure.
We’re pleased to see that we have a product that meets expectations in every respect,” says Johanna. In the long term, it is conceivable that space travel will generate new technology that can be used for terrestrial travel. “For example, a flight might start in Sweden and land a couple of hours later in Australia.
Hopefully, thanks to better energy efficiency, suborbital flights will help to reduce the environmental impact of travel,” Johanna adds.
Since spring 2009, ICEHOTEL is one of five travel agents in the world that are licensed to sell tickets to space from Spaceport Sweden.